Impact of Agromet Advisory Services of DAMU Project in Mahabubabad District, Telangana, India

Agrometeorological Advisory Services (AAS) are being offered by India Meteorological Department (IMD), Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) under Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) scheme as a step towards providing weather information-based crop or livestock management strategies and operations dedicated to enhancing crop production and food security. The Government of India has entrusted IMD the task of establishing weather observing system and development of GKMS in the country. In pursuance, IMD has set up a network of District Agro-Meteorology Unit (DAMU) in 530 districts in the country. The DAMU project was started at PJTSAU- Mahabubabad, Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Malyal during 2019 with operational districts of Mahabubabad, Warangal (Rural), Jangaon, Jayashankar Bhupalapalli with an aim to disseminate weather based agro advisory bulletins to locations. The present study was conducted to determine the impact of DAMU project and importance of ICT Tools in dissemination of AAS among farmers by conducting a feedback survey through Google form in Telugu language by randomly selecting 200 beneficiaries belonging to Mahabubabad district. The study revealed that WhatsApp is the most convenient and widely used medium for weather information followed by personal visit to the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, (i.e, Location of observatory). It was observed that majority of the farmers i.e., 74.6 per cent get weather information through WhatsApp, using these bulletins, 64.5% respondents could save Rupees 2,500-5000 while 35.5% respondents could save Rupees 5000-20,000 in a season by either preponing or postponing the agriculture operations based on weather.