Effectiveness of mobile application based agromet advisory servict: Case Study in Telangana, India

In India, climatic factors are changing rapidly and climate-induced extreme events have increased over 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 impacts on land, water, and agriculture. To prepare farmers for 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, etc., yet the adaptability is not that high. It means there exist considerable knowledge gaps in understanding climate vulnerability, socio-economic impacts, and suitable ways to build resilience. A study was done to assess the effectiveness and to improve weather-based location and crop-specific climate-resilient 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 helped to build the resilience of the farming community to climate change and mobile application (FarmPrecise app) is an effective way of their dissemination. Farmers were 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.