Network of Agromet
Service
District-level agro-meteorological advisory service, providing a
5-day weather forecast for farmers, in 550 districts made operational by the
India Meteorological Department is providing information through mobile to
about 2,500,000 farmers for planning their agricultural activities.
The
Agromet Advisory Services through various channels have resulted in significant
increases in farm productivity, resulting in increased availability of food and
higher income generation. It has helped the farmers not
only in increasing their productions but also reducing their losses due to
changing weather patterns and others problems. There is need to ensure that all
farmers, small, marginal and big, are able to benefit from the Agromet Advisory
Services.
At
present about 15 percent of the farmers are benefitting from the SMS services
and about 24 percent farmers are aware about Agromet services. The economic
benefit of these services which has been estimated by NCAER at Rs.50,000 crores
per year is extrapolated to rise to Rs.211,000 crores if the entire farming
community in the country were to apply Agromet information to their
agricultural activity.
Still
no doubt there is a long way to go in not only increasing production but
raising the income of farmers and reducing their losses and ultimately
distress. It is a challenging task for the Government, IMD as well as the other
stake holders to achieve this. However
making use of IT and developments in the field of information technology transfer
many new initiatives are in pipeline to far reach the AAS service by the IMD.
Soon IMD will be launching spoken web service so that farmers across the
country can soon get their agriculture and weather-related queries answered and
it will also provide an interactive medium for the farming community which will
be of great use to illiterate farmers who are not technologically equipped.
Dissemination
Disseminating agrometeorological
information is part of a process that begins with scientific knowledge and
understanding and ends with the evaluation of the information. The task of AAS
is to provide information to help farmers make the best possible use of weather
and climate resources. For a very long time programme like Krishi Darshan
were the only source of information for farmers across the country. In the
changing scenario and revolution IT sector the dissemination of
information to farmers too is taking multi-channel routes. Good
communication and working relationships mechanism have been set up under IAAS
with the largest agricultural extension agencies in the country, network of
Krishi Vigyan Kendras (Agriculture Science Centres), Kisan Call Centre etc., to
promote participatory methods for interactions with farmers. Due care is being
taken regarding content of the message which must be relevant to the weather
based farm decision making by the farmer. This involves the identification of
weather & climate sensitive decisions and interactions between the weather
forecasters from meteorological Centres of IMD and the agriculture scientists
from Agriculture Universities and Institutes of Indian Council of Agriculture
Research to develop weather based advisories and technological decisions.
Information is disseminated through multi-modes. It includes All India Radio,
Doordarshan, Print Media (local news paper in different vernacular languages),
internet as well as group and individual relationships through email, telephone
etc. The use of media such as mobile, e-mail or the Internet by the farming
community is on significant rise. SMS and voice messages
on mobiles are the latest techniques to reach out to the
farmers.
Of late encouraged by many State
Governments Maharashtra, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Kerala,
many private firms started disseminating advisories through SMS to the farming
community under PPP mode. Like Reuter Market Light, Handygo, Vritti Solution,
IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited (IKSL) and Nokia are disseminating the agromet
advisories through SMS and Interactive Voice over cell phone to farmers at 15
states namely Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Orissa, West Bengal, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. State Department of Agriculture,
Government of Maharashtra has taken an active role in disseminating advisory in
local language through SMS to the farming community of Maharashtra . At present 2.8 million farmers
are benefited by this service.
Awareness
Programmne
As the
interaction between the weather and agriculture is complex, it is not just a
case of applying a simple solution and expecting the same to be implemented by
the farmers. More targeted weather and climate information can increase
preparedness and lead to better economic, social, and environmental outcomes
for farmers. Given the
current concerns with climate change and it’s impacts on crop productivity,
there is an urgent need to sensitize the farmers about the projected climate
change in their regions and the different adaptation strategies that can be
considered to cope with the projected change. Hence, awareness process to understand
the influence of weather and changing climate on sustainable agricultural
production is an integral part of the service. Under IAAS, awareness programs
for farmers highlight the farming community about the climate change and its
impact on agriculture are being conducted. 76 such programs have been conducted
across the country so far.
Feedback
Regular feedback
from farmers, State Agricultural Departments and Agricultural Universities
Impact
Assessment
Impact
assessment of weather forecast based agro-advisory service shows that in most
of the cases use of AAS advisories resulted in decline in the cost of
cultivation up to 25% for the study crops. In some cases, cost of cultivation
did increase up to 10% as a result of follow up action on AAS advisories, but
this was more than offset by the consequent increase in net returns up to 83%,
with a modal value of 20%. The major crops which benefited most from the use of
AAS service are paddy, wheat, pearl millet and fruits and vegetables. This
proves the usefulness of AAS advisories. This also endorses the need for
dissemination of Integrated Agro-Meteorological Advisory Service
(IAAS) information
to farmers on a wider scale and convincing them about its positive impacts on a
sustainable basis. Equally important but the most challenging task would be to
enhance the accuracy of weather forecast and to make the AAS more useful and
demand-driven for the farm households
In spite of
advances made in weather forecasting and operational agromet advisory services
to the users, the real value in terms of offering right advice at right time to
the farmers is somewhat lacking. The integrated agromet advisory services was
launched with a dream to provide real time crop and location specific agromet
services up to village level is a long way not only in reducing weather and
climate related risks in Agriculture but also promote scientific agriculture.
Hence to overcome the hurdle in shortfall
of observation, seamless weather forecast, manpower, real time information
flow, Research and Development
(R&D), dissemination etc., IMD proposes to extend this service to block level by developing
block level forecast and advisories using satellite and remote sensing data,
establishment of District agromet field unit, assist various research
organization by providing online agromet data and creating a Centre for Research
and Excellence in Agrometeorology (CREAM) at Pune during the XIIthFive
Year Plan and thereby reaching the target upto village.
