Real-time SMS alert for farmers on impact of climate variation on crops

Farmers now get an alert on their mobile phones of sudden climate variations that can harm their crops.

Updated on: Nov 16, 2011, 21:46:25 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Farmers now get an alert on their mobile phones of sudden climate variations that can harm their crops.

This is one of the innovative projects taken up by the central government to help farmers adapt to climate change in the country’s 100 most vulnerable districts, climate-wise.

Dr B Venkateswarlu, director of Hyderabad based Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture said the Rs 350 crore project has been launched with an aim to educate farmers about the adverse impact of climate change on agriculture.

In this project, sensors have been installed in farms which record the varying temperature. As soon as the temperature falls below a certain level, which can be harmful for crops, an automatic SMS is sent to the farmer.

“It provides two to three hours to the farmers to deal with the situation,” he said. One such option is to light a fire to increase the ground temperature so that damage to the crop can be minimized. There have been huge losses to wheat crops in Punjab and Haryana during winter months because of the frost.

The new SMS alert system has been tested in Indian Council for Agricultural Research farms and is now being implemented in fields in the Indo-Gangetic plane, which is most prone to crop damage from cold wave.

Venkateshwarlu at a Centre for Science and Environment workshop said that climate change can cause a fall in wheat production by 10-15 % and cereal production by 10-40 % depending on the increase in temperature.

Research has also shown that rabi crop is more vulnerable to climate variation as compared to the kharif crop, especially in northern India. In addition, an increase in temperature would result in a fall in per cow milk production and fish production, especially in the Bay of Bengal.

The Indian Institute for Tropical Meteorology, which has a centre for climate change, has found that monsoon rainfall has reduced in states such as Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Kerala whereas it has increased in Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Jammu amd Kashmir.

Impact of climate change on monsoon in the Indian context is now well documented.

Central India witnessed up to 30 % less rainfall during the monsoon. On the other hand, climate change has caused heavy downpour in districts in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, which were traditionally drought-prone. “As many as 14 districts in Bihar faced drought whereas 15 others were flooded with excessive rain,” he said.

To reduce impact of climate change on agriculture, the agriculture ministry has embarked upon the project where farmers are advised on climate resilient crops and ways to minimize the impact of climate change. This SMS alert is one component of the project.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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