Indian agriculture is monsoon dependent, with over 60 percent being rainfed. Climate change & increasing weather uncertainty has made agriculture and farming a high-risk gamble. Traditional markers used by farmers to make decisions are no longer reliable due to changes in weather patterns & behavior of pests & diseases. Rising costs of agricultural inputs, declining productivity, market volatility & low returns are making farming an unattractive source of livelihoods & income.
Farmers need a dynamic decision support system that is tailored to their specific farms and provides them weather-responsive advisories across key aspects of agricultural operations. This will help them mitigate weather-induced risks, reduce losses & costs of production, increase productivity & improve incomes.
This application which generates dynamic weather-based crop management advisories that are tailored to crop & farm specific conditions & it provides integrated & holistic solutions emphasizing on environmentally-friendly practices.
It is unique because it is:
- participatory: the farmer co-creates the advisory by providing key farm & crop-related information & feedback;
- generates weather responsive, crop & farm specific farming advisories covering all aspects of crop cycle on a daily basis.
- dynamic: it responds to likely changes in weather conditions during the day & provides tailored advisories accordingly
- customizable to farm specificities such as type of crops grown, date of sowing, fertilizers used, soil type & soil fertility
- provides integrated & holistic solutions & emphasizes environmentally-friendly practices
- provides interactive background which changes according to the time of day, weather conditions & provides notification for sudden climatic disasters
Impact: 15-20% increased crop productivity; 10-15% reduced costs of cultivation
The Multilingual App provides advisories in regional languages so farmers can easily understand & follow. The advisories are also supported by multimedia content.

http://farmprecise.org

• India

• Women
• Remote and rural communities
• Small and marginal farmers

This project is currently working in 4 states in India and is available in 5 languages. It can further be scaled up by replicating the existing model to reach more geographic areas and agroclimatic zones within India. This project is also viable to be replicated in other countries with similar agricultural practices and agroclimatic zones like India.
Currently the project works on an individual farmer basis where having access to an Android smartphone is one of the basic needs to be able to access all features of the app. We aim to extend the project to the farmers without smartphones by creating a tool that helps extension workers and officials to record the data of those farmers and provide them with customised advisories and other relevant information.

This project can be sustainably run by securing funding support to cover the development and maintenance costs of the app which is available free of cost for the end users. Another possibility is collaborating with government and CSR organisations to reach out to the maximum number of farmers and sustain this initiative. It can also be integrated into the Government systems of delivering agro-advisories to farmers making it more accessible and therefore helping the farmers become more climate resilient in their agricultural practices. As the user base is going to increase over a period of time a revenue mechanism through advertising, linking with agriculture service providers, market, etc., will be explored.

The project is a part of developing a weather- based integrated suite of services that seek to not only address immediate concerns (such as weather, reduction in cost of cultivation, productivity enhancement, market prices) but also make agriculture itself more resilient to climate-induced risks, environment friendly and sustainable. It emphasizes use of local solutions and resources, local seed varieties, soil health and fertility improvement, crop intensification practices, appropriate and judicious use of fertilizers, efficient use of irrigation water and environmentally friendly pest and disease management practices which also includes controlled use of chemical agents, when required. Emphasis is given to integrated water-nutrient-pest and disease management practices adapted to local agro-ecological-socio-cultural situations and rainfall patterns. The project focuses on reaching out to small, marginal & women farmers and is made available to them at zero cost. The project has a participatory approach where the farmers are the co-creators of the advisories Our aim is to disseminate the research that has been done in the academia (agriculture institutions) to the farmers using wireless digital technologies & create awareness among them to adopt climate resilient and environment friendly practices.