Need of IT Agrarians in Commodity market:

Indian agribusiness sector is characterized by lack of adequate, reliable, timely information and analysis on various aspects of business such as latest price & trend at major national and international market, demand and supply pattern, scientific forecasting, crop & weather information and its impact on agribusiness sector.

So During the last few years, several innovative applications have emerged around the world that promises to bridge the proverbial “Digital divide.” The e-choupal project in India is one such example of an information technology based platform that is used by farmers in India to sell their agricultural produce, look up weather information, and obtain expert crop advice (Upton and Fuller 2004).

Other examples include online cooperatives of trades people in South America to directly sell products to end consumers (Anonymous 2000), trading Web sites for cattle ranchers in the United States (Bearden 2004), and online coffee auctions in Brazil (Scholer 2003). The common purpose of these initiatives is to link the rural communities to the Internet, provide timely price information and disseminate farming knowledge, allow producers to execute trades and transactions, eliminate intermediaries, reduce unscrupulous trading, and consequently transform the global agricultural supply chain that supports the livelihood of billions of people around the world. The impact of IT on the agricultural supply chain has largely been ignored in the information systems empirical literature.

However, two factors make this an important and fruitful research area. First, while such initiatives have the potential to affect the lives of billions of people that live on the other side of the digital divide, their effectiveness is often unclear, and many are skeptical that the benefits actually reach the rural communities (Anonymous 2005). Second, several unanswered research questions arise in this context that are important for policy formulation, such as the nature and magnitude of the benefits from online platforms, who appropriates the benefits, types of products that are suitable, and other factors that affect the benefits obtained.