Maharashtra becomes first Indian state to use Automated Weather Stations for farmers

Devendra Fadnavis, Maharasthra CM inaugurated the state's first automatic weather stations for farmers in Dongargaon, Nagpur.

Around 2,065 such weather stations will come in Maharashtra on PPP (public private partnership) models in this year and 1000 of these will be set up by June 2017.

The Automated Weather Stations (AWS) will be helpful in measuring the wind direction, wind speed, air temperature, relative humidity, and record the amount of rainfall. The gathered information will be shared among the farmers by making them available on Mahavedh portal (Maharashtra agriculture weather information network) as well as on the Skymet mobile application.

Key feature of Automated Weather Stations and their usage:

1. Skymet Weather Private Ltd, a weather forecasting firm will be setting up these weather stations.

2. Farmers of the state can make use of this information for sowing in a much better and planned way, according to the weather conditions.

3. These weather stations are significant because the IMD forecast is limited to only four zones and is not made available at the taluka level. However, AWS will provide forecast up to the taluka level. Around 12*12 km area of the taluka will have one AWS, promised the CM.

4. Digital kiosks will also be set-up in every Gram Panchayat to give out weather related information and expert advice on crop patterns to be followed by the farmers.

5. During the first phase, the information will be shared via SMS. In the second phase, half hourly updates will be provided to all the Gram Panchayats.

6. The AWS sensors will be able to record important farming parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall, solar radiation, leaf wetness, soil moisture, atmospheric pressure and evapotranspiration.

7. The state government intends to use the AWS data for better preparation for location-specific agriculture advisories, better disaster management, designing crop insurance schemes and for establishing a weather database bank.