Major change in crop weather advice

India Meteorological Department (IMD) plans to change its weather advisory service for farmers, linking it to a dynamic crop calendar of each district, based on the onset and progress of the monsoon.

The advisory will also have information on the type of crop needing to be sown, depending on irrigation and rain in that region, with a contingency plan if showers fail. According to senior officials, the improved advisories as part of IMD’s Grameen Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) could begin in the coming kharif season. The Central Institute of Dryland Agriculture already has a model for a dynamic crop calendar. It prepared this in 2015 for 25 districts across 22 states, using the results of 30 years of field experiments.  It has been prepared for major crops — rice, wheat, groundnut, soybean, maize, mustard, cotton. 

The met plans to use the same model, linking with the onset and progress of the monsoon. “We are getting district-specific rain requirement for all the 640 districts in the country, based on which a rainfall outlook will be issued, along with details like whether supplementary irrigation is required or not,” IMD head K J Ramesh told this newspaper.

Instructions on how to deal with high-value crops like horticulture and floriculture would be included. The four-month southwest monsoon season that starts from June is the lifeline for Indian agriculture. Less than half of farm land is irrigated. Rainfall varies between agro-climatic zones and across districts.  

To ensure the information spreads a s much as possible, IMD has entered into an agreement with India Post, for a cellphone database of farmer households. The Post will collect the information and upload it on a common website, to be accessed by the met department for sending these advisories. The service is planned as free of charge, for now. These advisories would also be displayed in post offices across the country.

At present, under the GKMS, the met provides crop-specific advisories to farmers at the district level twice a week, through print, radio and visual media, beside SMS and an Integrated Voice Response System. Around 12 million farmers are covered under this advisory of the 140 farmer households in the country. 
 

An article recently published in the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) estimated that unseasonal rain, wind and hail that lashed Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in March 2014 affected about three million hectares of rabi crops (wheat, pulses, oilseeds); horticulture and cash crops (grapes, pomegranates and oranges) suffered the most. In Maharashtra alone, the damage was estimated to exceed Rs 5,000 crore; in MP, a little over Rs 3,000 crore.

“Studies reveal a declining trend in the all-India summer monsoon rainfall over the past 60 years, which is expected to continue. This, with the increasing frequency of erratic monsoon behavior, irregular rainfall patterns, and intense unseasonal and extreme weather events will result in more losses, damages and grief to farmers, especially smallholders who have hardly any means to cope with these climate-induced disasters,” the article noted.

Key takeaways

* IMD will incorporate dynamic crop calendar linked to monsoon rains and contingency plan for each district

* The advisories could be sent directly into the mobile phone of farmers free-of-cost

* The department has entered into an agreement with India Post to collect mobile data information from farmers’ households

* The advisories could also be displayed in Post Offices for wider reach

* Already, social organisations have done a pilot on such kind of agromet services in Maharashtra