The Government Launched a Free SMS Service for Farmers on Extreme Weather ConditionsHome

The government launched a free SMS service called as 'Nowcast' to provide alerts on extreme weather conditions such as hailstorm every three hours to over one crore registered farmers on their mobile phones.

A web-portal on crop insurance was also unveiled to create awareness and encourage more farmers to insure their crops taking advantage of existing schemes. The web portal, however, has been launched in English.

Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said that "The SMS warnings on extreme weather conditions such as thunderstorm, hail, and squall will help farmers take precautionary measures as needed and feasible," after the launch.
The free SMS alerts, to be sent 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 weather stations of the India Meteorological Department (IMD).

IMD Director General L S Rathore said, "These alerts are already available on IMD website. Since the warnings are valid for three hours on the website, farmers could not get the information in time because of limitations in accessing the IMD website at farm level."
Under this initiative, the extreme weather data originated from IMD is being moved to mKisan portal using a web service. From mKisan portal, warnings regarding extreme weather conditions are automatically transmitted by SMS to farmers located at district and block level.

Source: http://www.ndtv.com/