Impact Assessment on Knowledge of Weather Based Agro-advisory Services among Farmers in Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu

Weather influences the production and productivity of various crops. If farmers aware about the real time weather factors such as temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction and rainfall it will be the effective to prevent the crop failure and achieve high yield with better economic returns. The right weather information at right time facilitates the farmers to plan agricultural operations from selection of crops to post harvest to avoid crop losses. 382 AAS bulletins were prepared and disseminated to the farmers during 2019-2020. To study the effect of weather based agro-advisory services, a random sample survey was conducted from 60 farmers from villages of Tiruvallur and Tiruttani block of Tiruvallur district. Results indicated that focusing illiterate farmers are much more important and dissemination of weather advisories in audio or visual format is preferable to make them to adapt weather based agricultural practices. The survey revealed that 65 per cent of farmers check weather forecast before going for spraying operation, 73 per cent for irrigation and 55 per cent for animal husbandry maintenance. Our study revealed that the farmers focus more on spraying and irrigation operation based on weather forecast. Further, awareness is to be created to realize that they should also need to follow weather forecasts from the selection of crop to post harvest in order to achieve better productivity and good income.