Effectiveness of Mobile Application-based Agromet Advisory Service

Case Study in Telangana, India

Abstract

In India, climatic factors changing very rapidly and climate-induced extreme events are increased during the period of the last two decades. Consequently, India is facing a double challenge of sustaining rapid economic growth while combating the threat of climate change, especially regarding its impacts on land, water, and agriculture. To adapt farmers to the changes, the government and other external agencies are providing several kinds of support like crop insurance, subsidies, loan free of interest/lowest rate, agro-advisories but yet the adaptability is not that high. It means, there exists considerable knowledge gaps in understanding climate vulnerability, socio-economic impacts, and suitable ways to build resilience. Therefore the study is planned to assess the effectiveness and to improve weather-based location and crop-specific climateresilient advisories through farmers’ feedback. Advisories were disseminated via mobile application (FarmPrecise app) for Kharif and Rabi seasons of the year 2020-21 for the paddy crop of the Narayanpet district of Telangana. Results indicate that weather-based Climate Resilient Agriculture (CRA) advisories help to build the resilience of the farming community to climate change and mobile application (FarmPrecise app) is an effective way of their dissemination. Farmers are able to reduce the input cost and increase the net profit for the crops. However, farmers’ feedback revealed that community-level capacity building is required to increase the adoption of weather-based CRA advisories and communicating advisories in colloquial language will have a greater uptake