16. Weather Based Information on Risk Management in Agriculture

Weather and climate information plays a major role in the entire crop cycle right from selecting the most suitable crop/variety/ field preparation up to post harvest operations and marketing; and if provided in advance can be helpful in inspiring the farmer to organize and activate their own resources in order to reap the benefits by judicious application of costly inputs. It becomes more and more important to supply meteorological information blended with weather sensitive management operations before the start of cropping season in order to adapt the agricultural system to increased weather variability. India Meteorological Department (IMD), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) in collaboration with Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and State Agriculture Universities (SAUs) is rendering weather forecast based District level Agro meteorological Advisory Services (AAS) to the farmers in the country under the scheme “Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS)” since monsoon 2008. AAS provides advance weather information along with crop specific agromet advisories to the farming community by using state of the art instruments and technology through efficient delivering mechanism of the information which ultimately enables farmers to take appropriate actions at farm level. This present system of delivering the services at district level is underway to extend up to sub-district/ block level with dissemination up to village level to meet the end users’ requirements in both the irrigated and rainfed systems and facilitate the agriculture risk management effectively.