Skymet Advisories Changed Lives of Farmers in Anand District of Gujrat
Indian agriculture and weather vagaries go hand in hand. Changing weather patterns have left farmers in lurch as their investment capital is more than what they earn out of the yield. In such a situation, precise and accurate weather forecast is dependably a help for the rural sector division of the country that holds the most extreme ratio in the GDP of the Indian economy.
To make strength towards changing climatic hazard in agribusiness, Skymet, a leading Indian private sector weather forecaster joined hands with USAID under the project “Partnership in Climate Services for Resilient Agriculture in India” to provide farmers with better weather and agri advisories, along with making insurance more accessible to 80,000 farmers in nine states of India.
One such beneficiary is Bhavesh Patel, a farmer from Valedi village in Anand district of Gujarat who has been reaping benefits of Skymet Weather advisories for quite long now. Patel recalls that in the year 2016, he along with his fellow member of the Amul cooperative for the past 15 years, came in contact with the Skymet team.
These farmers receive crop and weather advisories to make informed farming decisions around cropping and livestock rearing.
Patel survives a family of seven that includes his parents, wife, two children and a brother. He also has two milk cattle to take care of. 42-year old Rao said that he has been engaged in farming for the last 17 years and agriculture is his main occupation. He owns a total of 4.25 acres of land out of which, 1 acre of land is on lease. Patel grows two crops in a year namely Paddy in the Kharif season and Black Gram in the Rabi season.
Patel has been engaged in cotton farming but due to lack of any weather information, untimely rains damaged his crop, which was a setback for him. He came under acute financial crunch and at once thought of selling his belongings. Due to lack of awareness, Patel also used to rely upon astrology for cultivating crops but nothing could save him.
Crop insurance was an alien thing to Patel and his fellow farmers and since their was no one to educate them, they were afraid of enrolling into one. However, this changed with Skymet team coming into picture.
After the initiation of the program, farmers are now getting timely weather forecast that too in their local language. The advisory includes weather alerts be it about harsh winters, heavy rains, squally winds or rising mercury. Patel says that the weather board arranged in his village and the weather alerts is fruitful in creating weather awareness among the famers.
The program also focuses on delivering real time crop advisories based on high quality weather data that talks about quality of seed, sowing timing, usage of fertilizers and pesticides.
According to Patel, the best thing of the project is that Skymet has been highlighting on the benefits of the crop insurance, which seems to be an ultimate solution to cover up the losses incurred due to weather.
The project team had received a ‘Letter of Appreciation’ from the District Agriculture Officer - Anand for its engagement with 1000 enrolled farmers in the past two years.
Interestingly, over 15 enrolled farmers are a part of the iconic AMUL dairy cooperative, that are using Skymet's advisories to plan on-farm and off-farm activities for Kharif (summer sown) field crops like cotton and pearl millet; and fodder crops like maize and sorghum.