Come March and 199 district agromet units will wind up, as per Centre’s order

The 199 District Agromet Units (DAMUs), which provide crucial district and block level agrometeorological advisory service to lakhs of farmers across the country, have been asked by the government to wind up their operations.

These units, established by India Meteorological Department (IMD) under the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES) and Indian Institute of Agricultural Research (ICAR) under the agriculture ministry, provide important agrometeorological advisories on every Tuesday and Friday to farmers at the district and block levels.

These advisories are crucial, especially at the time of climate change and increased weather variability, as they combine IMD’s weather forecast and validate it with local weather variability and conditions, specifically for the farming community.

The services will be stopped from March onwards, as per directions from the Union government, IMD scientist SC Bhan confirmed to Down To Earth (DTE). Bhan is the deputy general manager of Agromet Advisory Service Division.

The decision, which came on January 17, 2024 through an office memorandum, seems sudden as the government had approved increasing the number of DAMUs phase wise to 530. The plan was to cover entire country.

Sources told DTE the programme has been facing financial and administrative issues. However, Bhan said the programme was in project mode. He added that the government has not approved its further extension.

Importance of DAMUs

Scientists associated with agriculture advisories in different states said DAMUs were the only units involved in giving such advisories at a district or block level. Stopping the project could cause losses for farmers who depend heavily on the advisories for carrying out their day-to-day agricultural operations.

DAMUs were set up in 2018-19 in the premises of Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVK) of ICAR and state agriculture universities, under the Gramin Krishi Mausam Seva (GKMS) scheme.

They have played an important role in providing value added weather forecast data for the next five days with crop specific weather advisory messages.

“Suppose there is rain in one corner of the district and none in the other. There is weather variability in different areas in terms of agricultural operations to be carried out. DAMU staff, with the help of remote sensing data, used to translate these forecasts into advisories for different corners of the district,” said KK Singh, who retired from IMD in 2022 and has worked in developing agro-advisory services during his time.

The units develop these advisories based on a crop weather calendar and depending on the different phenological stages of the crop: for example, different advisories for when the crop is at the germination stage, or during the grain setting period, ear head emergence, or ripening. The advisories also provided pest and disease forewarning.

The forecast was based on eight weather parameters: maximum temperature, minimum temperature, rainfall, cloud cover, wind speed, wind direction, morning relative humidity, and evening relative humidity.

These messages, in both English and regional languages, were prepared with the help of KVK scientists and disseminated to farmers, in a particular block and district through different means of communication like Whatsapp groups, text messages and through the state agricultural department network.

Apart from the fixed days, there was weather warning on extreme weather events as and when required.

“This is highly significant for farmers because they decide which crop to choose, when to sow it, the ideal time for irrigation, based on these advisories. There is no other agromet advisory service programme that matches this level of precision and importance. There are private players but those are few and scattered and there is no systematic and structured organisation. Closing this programme will not be in the interests of farmers, especially at the time of increased weather variability,” said an ICAR scientist who did not wish to be named.

In fact, an assessment of weather forecast-based advisories in 2020 by third party organisation National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) estimated an additional annual income of Rs 12,500 per agricultural household belonging to the below poverty line category in rain-fed areas. Total income gain was estimated at Rs 13,331 crore per annum in rain-fed districts.

This study was also quoted in the Lok Sabha in April 2023 by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology and MoES.

Around 98 per cent of surveyed farmers (3,965 farmers across 121 districts of 11 states of India) made modifications to at least one of nine practices based on weather advisories.

Average annual income of farming households increased from Rs 1.98 lakh (which adopted no modifications) to Rs 3.02 lakh (which adopted all the nine practices). An investment of Rs 1,000 crore will yield economic benefits of about Rs 50,000 crore over a period of five years, it said.

The district agromet unit at Cuttack has expressed concern over the decision and has written to the agriculture ministry. “The estimated additional benefit over the next five years from continuing the DAMU under the Rural Agro-Meteorological Service is around Rs 48,056 crore,” it noted in the letter.

Now, with DAMUs being asked to close down, farmers will get advisories only from the existing 130 Agromet Field Units (AMFU). AMFUs also issue similar advisories, but the shortcoming is that these have less capacity, when compared to DAMUs.

One AMFU covers four to five districts on average and will not be able to provide block level information. The two services combined cover around 2.5 million farmers.

“We should have been moving from block level to village level. But instead, we are now moving to one AMFU covering four-five districts,” said the ICAR scientist.

Financial troubles?

In the last few years, finance disbursal (especially disbursal of staff salaries) has been stuck on several occasions. This has led to protests and complaints by DAMU employees.

“The funding agency is MoES or IMD. Finance disbursal was not timely. Salaries were not being given on time and were accumulating. Employees have carried out representations in ICAR and IMD, the ministry, and even to the PMO portal. Then, when this issue was taken up, it was decided that the nodal ministry should be the agriculture ministry and it should be run by ICAR and not by IMD, whose role is providing meteorological information. So, the suggestion was that IMD should wind up its operations in this project and the agriculture ministry should take it up,” said a source who is in the know-how of the developments.

But another source said it will be a big and challenging task for ICAR to take up since the annual investment involved is around Rs 6,200 crore.

“ICAR is already stressed with funding KVKs and other projects,” they said.

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