SMS will now warn farmers on extreme weather conditions

The Indian government has launched a free SMS service called ‘Nowcast’ to provide alerts on extreme weather conditions like hailstorm every three hours to over one crore registered farmers on their mobile phones.

 Besides, a web-portal on crop insurance plan used to be additionally unveiled to create awareness and encourage greater farmers to insure their plants taking gain of current schemes. The web portal, however, has been launched in English. “The SMS warnings on intense climate conditions like thunderstorm, hail, and squall will assist farmers take precautionary measures as needed and feasible,” Indian Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh stated after the launch.

The free SMS alerts, to be dispatched in English, Hindi and regional languages as per farmers’ request, will be issued to over one crore farmers whose mobile phones are already registered on the government’s mKisan portal. The data for SMS service would be taken from the 146 climate stations of the India Meteorological Department (IMD). IMD’s has 17 Doppler radars that feed data on excessive weather to these stations, the Minister added.

IMD Director General L S Rathore said, “These signals are already handy on IMD website. Since the warnings are legitimate for three hours on the website, farmers should not get the data in time due to the fact of boundaries in accessing the IMD internet site at farm level.” Under this initiative, the excessive climate records originated from IMD is being moved to mKisan portal the usage of a net service. From mKisan portal, warnings related to severe climate stipulations are automatically transmitted by using SMS to farmers located at district and block level, in accordance to PTI.

On net portal, the Agriculture Minister said, “There is a lack of cognizance about crop insurance among the farming neighborhood in the country. The portal will provide data about existing insurance plan products, top rate rates, amongst different details.”

In the second phase, the Minister stated the portal will be launched in Hindi and different regional languages and will also supply an on-line interface for submitting insurance purposes and scrutiny of the identical through banks.

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