Imtisenla Walling & Ph Romen Sharma
ICAR, Nagaland Centre
Agricultural advisories are one of the critical farm inputs for any farming activities, of which weather and climatic information plays an important role in agriculture. If provided in advances, it will help farmers in making decisions and efficient mobilization of farm resources. Gramin Krishi Mausam Sewa (GKMS) project of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Nagaland Centre, Medziphema has been operational since 2008. The project has a range of activities and has been preparing and disseminating a biweekly bulletins, for all the eleven districts of Nagaland taking into account all agricultural and allied sector.
The activities are very relevant for the farmers of the state, as more than 70% of our state population depends on agriculture for their livelihood. However, farmers of the state are facing huge challenges in the form of rainfed agriculture and large areas are under default rainfed because of its topography. In such, the role of weather and climate are even more important than in areas where infrastructure on irrigation, modern agriculture are prevalent. Moreover, many of agriculture practices, activities, occurrence of diseases, pest etc. are seasonal and weather bound. To counter the adversaries arising from the overdependence of monsoon, erratic weather patterns, and for the overall development of agriculture and allied sectors, information of the happening of weathers and climate, climate based strategic agronomic planning and timely agro-advisories will help the farmers to adopting farming practices with more resilient and productive.
Kisan Mobile Advisory Services (KMAS) under GKMS project has been delivering information for the farming community of the state by harnessing the information and communication technology based mobile networks. It is one such tool where the information is reach at a stroke of a mouse click, and enables the farmer to have information access and face the challenges ahead of them. The aim is to provide timely quality need based information on various topics and context of agriculture and allied sector in the right quantity and right form thus empowering the farmers with information and improving their decision making ability. The delivered information is location-specific and crop or enterprise specific. Information is delivered to the registered farmers of the state through mobile Short Message Services (SMS). On every Tuesday and Friday, Short Message Service are send to the registered farmers covering various topics like crop production, crop protection, livestock management (poultry, piggery), weather forecast, horticulture crops, fishery, general awareness and other agriculture information etc. Initially the messages were sent in English language but later with feedback and demand for local dialect, messages are now disseminated in local dialect (Nagamese).
Some sample of the messages are Tin char din tae Nagaland lagah kunba jagah tae dangor hawa pani aru borof bi ahiboleh pareh. khiti bagan tae pani nalah bhal para bonailobi aru gass nichetae mati uthaibi. Dated April 20, 2017. Kheti bagan tae eku nalagaigenah khali nacharibi. Borokhon dangor aha somoi tae, mati lagah mol (nutrient)khan pani para lui jai. Enikah nohobo karoneh,kheti bagan khali hobo somoi tae, khata somai laga sobji beans khan nishinah lagabi. Dated April 21, 2017.
More than 7900 registered farmers of the state are benefitting from the free of cost Agromet SMS services. With the objective to provide the services to maximum numbers of farmers of the state, there is a need to increase the outreach. For which, different stakeholders like State line departments at district and block level, NGOs, KVKs, ATMAs, farmers associations etc. have a role to play by participating and help the farmers in registration to the said project by providing the details (mobile number) of the farmers for maximum outreach across the region of the state. The stakeholders and farmers can contact ICAR Research Complex for NEH, Nagaland Centre, Medziphema, Dimapur, through email (icarnagaland@gmail.com) or contact number of ICAR, Nagaland Centre or personal visit.
The farmers’ needs are to be understood and addressed but at the same time initiatives should be undertaken to improve and improvise the delivery system. The information disseminated through mobile will play a great role but it should be according to the enterprises, crops adopted by the farmers and based on the assessment of felt needs of the stakeholders.
