Finding out exact production details of farm output in Karnataka is likely to become easier as the state government has taken steps to install telemetric rain gauges in all its gram panchayats.
Measuring rainfall on a real-time basis will be possible with telemetric rain gauges, a top official attached to Karnataka Agricultural Department said.
The data collected through this arrangement could be made available in minutes. Daily alerts on rainfall could be sent through SMS to farmers and officials.
Telemetric rain gauges were proved to be effective when they were installed on a pilot basis in 748 hobli headquarters and 100 gram panchayats.
The pilot programme was a runaway success in updating government agencies and farmers with authenticated data on rainfall patterns, including floods and drought. Nearly 20 lakh data is accessed from the existing telemetric rain gauges every day and 15,000 SMSes on rain data are sent daily to officials of various departments, including deputy commissioners, zilla panchayat chief executive officers and superintendents of police, during monsoon season.
Following this, the telemetric rain gauges using technologies such as the general packet radio services (GPRS) and the global system for mobile communication (GSM) will be installed in all gram panchayats to cover entire state.
In addition, the telemetric rain gauges already installed in 748 hoblis will be upgraded into telemetric weather stations for measuring rainfall, temperature, wind, speed and humidity.
The real-time data on rainfall is not only useful in planning agriculture and sending necessary advisories to farmers, it is also beneficial in popularising weather-based crop insurance among farmers as accurate rainfall data will be available in 15 minutes.
Officials said Karnataka would be greatly benefitted with the telemetric rain gauges, as the state has several temperature and rainfall sensitive crops, including coffee. Although Karnataka is the most productive coffee region in the country with a contribution of 70% to the total coffee production, ecologically it is the most fragile. Any excessive weather condition ? whether it is high temperature or heavy rains ? could damage coffee production Karnataka.
In fact, coffee growers in Karnataka were given an option to be covered under the Rainfall Insurance Scheme backed by Agricultural Insurance Company of India every season.
But still, several complaints have been raised by coffee farmers in availing rainfall insurance benefits because of inadequate rainfall data. This telemetric rainfall measuring system will sort out all these issues, the official added.
The drought monitoring cell (DMC) of the Karnataka State Natural Disaster Monitoring Centre is implementing the project under which telemetric rain gauges will be installed in 4,500 gram panchayats with funding from the Rashtriya Krishi Vikasa Yojana of the Centre.
The cost of installation and operation of each telemetric rain gauge for five years would be around Rs 50,000.
The telemetric data will be useful for the farmers to make preparations for cultivation during both the kharif and rabi seasons. Particularly, the kharif crops, which have been badly affected in the state in recent years due to excessive rain or acute drought.