FarmPrecise

Climate change and 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 and behavior of pests and diseases. Rising costs of agricultural inputs, declining productivity, market volatility, and low returns are making farming an unattractive source of livelihoods and income.

There is a need to provide farmers with a dynamic decision support system that is tailored to their specific farm and provides them weather-responsive advisories across key aspects of agricultural operations. This will help them mitigate weather-induced risks, reduce losses and costs of production, increase productivity and improve incomes.

In order to address this need, the Watershed Organisation Trust (WOTR) has developed FarmPrecise – a mobile application that generates dynamic weather-based, crop management advisories that are tailored to crop and farm-specific conditions. This enables a farmer to make appropriate and beneficial farming decisions.

FarmPrecise is unique:

• It is participatory - the farmer co-creates the advisory by providing key farm and crop-related information and feedback;

• It generates weather responsive, crop-and-farm specific farming advisories covering all aspects of the crop cycle on a daily basis.

• It is dynamic – it responds to likely changes in weather conditions during the day and provides tailored advisories accordingly.

• It is customizable to farm specificities such as type of crops grown, date of sowing, fertilizers used, soil type and soil fertility.

• It provides integrated and holistic solutions and emphasizes environmentally-friendly practices.

FarmPrecise Advisory Modules: 5 advisory modules are provided to the farmer, daily or as applicable:

Module 1: Weather Forecasts for 5 days, updated daily.

Module 2: Integrated Nutrient Management which includes weather-responsive, yield-targeted optimum doses of chemical, organic and botanical formulations, as required, tailored to crop requirements and soil conditions.

Module 3: Irrigation Management which includes when and how much to irrigate depending on crop water requirements, soil and weather conditions

Module 4: Integrated Pest and Disease Management which includes environmentally friendly and approved chemical plant protection measures based on crop growth stage, weather conditions and anticipated or observed pests/ diseases. These advisories cover both preventive as well as ameliorative measures. A facility to upload photographs also helps improve the identification of pests and diseases.

Module 5: General Advisories that promotes good agricultural practices such as crop-specific land management, in-situ soil and water conservation measures, seed treatment, crop geometry, trap crops, identification of pest-disease infestation, etc., as required.