AgriMet Advisories through Postmen

The India Meteorological Depart¬ment (IMD), in an effort to disseminate more valuable information to farmers to help them plan their crop cycle has decided to rope in postal department to collect and deliver weather information to remote villages.

How Will it Work?

The postman will be given a tem¬plate form when he goes to a village which will have basic questions, like cropping pattern of the village, land usage, etc. He has to fill the form and get phone numbers of some farmers, said the Deputy Director General at AgriMet (the IMD's Agricultural Meteorology Division).

• The postal department will feed this information to their servers, and IMD officials will then access the information collected by the postmen to churn out circle-level, custom-made weather and crop forecast.

• The IMD also plans to mount LED screens at village post offices, where weather and crop information would be shown through the day. All the screens will be connected to the remote server.

How Will it be Beneficial to Farmers?

Timely and precise weather-based advisories are invaluable for farmers to plan their crop cycle. The existing services viz Kisan portal and other services, have managed to reach 19 million farmers but the aim is to reach all 90 million farmers in India with custom-made weather andd advisories.

In India, where 1, 39,222 out oft 1, 54,239 post offices are in rural eas, this initiative would prove to a boon, if implemented successfu for the fact that in places where e mobile network does not exist, a p man could make all the differena information dissemination.

Referring to an economic imp analysis study by the National Cow of Applied Economic Research, IMD Director said that at least per cent of the farmers who rel on AgriMet reported an increase their net income. The service has potential of generating net econor benefit of up to Rs 3.3 lakh co when such advisories are fully utilized by all 90 million farmers," he said. At the moment, five villages — in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Andhra Pradesh — have been selected for the trial run of the 'project, and a budget is being worked out. Apart from the postal department, AgriMet plans to use services such as farmer's-cooperatives and agricultural produce market committees to ensure their advisories reach all corners.

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