Economic impact analysis of weather based agromet advisories on crops under climate change scenario

Crop yield is a function of several factors such as weather, soil type, its nutrients status, moisture, management practices and other available inputs. Weather significantly affects nearly every phase of agricultural activity from the preparatory tillage to harvesting, routine agricultural operation to plant protection measure and storage. Success or failure of farming is therefore intimately related to the prevailing weather conditions. Agricultural operations can be proper managed according to weather forecast which can help in optimum utilization of scarce resources and in turn maximize farm yield and minimize the farm losses. It is not possible to completely overcome all the production losses, but timely and accurate information of weather forecast is a boon to minimize production losses to some extent by making adjustments to intercultural operations and in increasing the B:C: ratio. Information of weather conditions in advance helps farmers to go for suitable management practices. Weather forecast and weather based agromet advisories are very useful in terms of maximizing production and economic returns to the farmers. Therefore, field experiments was conducted during rabi and kharif season of 2012 and 2013 at Rajasthan Agricultural Research Institute, Durgapura, Jaipur to study the economic impact of weather based agromet advisories on crops under climate change scenario. Field experiment comprises of use of agromet advisory services (AAS) and non-use of agromet advisory services (non AAS) in mustard and gram in rabi season and in cowpea and clusterbean in kharif seasons. Results of these experiments revealed that under use of agromet advisory services (AAS), the input cost is reduced and the net profit increased as compared to the non AAS in all the four crops. This economic benefit is attributed to timely and economic management of scarce resources in crops according to weather forecast based agromet advisory. Therefore it can be concluded that the application of weather forecast based agromet advisory bulletin is an important and useful tool for enhancing the production and overall farm income.