OREANDA-NEWS. Shri Y.S. Chowdary, Minister of State for the Ministry of Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, in a written reply to a Question in Rajya Sabha today, informed the House that the Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) of India Meteorological Department (IMD) is successful in providing the crop specific advisories to the farmers through different print/visual/Radio/ IT based media including short message service (SMS) and Interactive Voice Response Service (IVRS) facilitating for appropriate field level actions. Efforts are continuously being made to expand the participation and outreach to all farmers under GKMS scheme.

Detailing the current status of the scheme, the Minister informed that crop specific advisories under GKMS, through Agriculture Field Monitoring Unit (AFMU), are rendered twice a week in collaboration with State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), institutions of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), IITs etc. Such advisories are formulated based on district level weather forecast for next 5-days in respect of: 

  • Rainfall
  • Maximum temperature, minimum temperature
  • Wind speed, wind direction
  • Relative humidity and cloud cover
  • Weekly cumulative rainfall forecast

Further, Shri Chowdary, in his reply, noted that weather forecast based agro meteorological advisories are disseminated in vernacular language through Kisan portal launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and also under public private partnership. At present, the GKMS products are disseminated through SMS and IVRS to 19.1 million farmers in the country.