NOWCAST Union Government has launched NOWCAST weather alert system and Crop Insurance web portal for the benefit of farmers. The new initiatives were launched by Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh at a function held in New Delhi. NOWCAST weather alert system will provide free SMS service alerts on extreme weather conditions (ex-hailstorm) to over one crore registered farmers on their mobile phones. The free SMS alerts will be sent in Hindi, English and regional languages as per farmers’ request.
It will be issued to farmers whose mobile phones are already registered on the government’s mKisan portal. The data for NOWCAST service will be taken from India Meteorological Department’s (IMD’s) 146 weather stations. Apart from these stations, 17 doppler radars of IMD will also provide information in this SMS service. Under this initiative, the extreme weather data originated from IMD will be updated on mKisan portal using a web service. Later, from mKisan portal the warnings regarding extreme weather conditions will be automatically transmitted by SMS to farmers located at district and block level. Insurance Web-Portal (www.farmer.gov.in/insurance) will be used to create awareness and encourage farmers to insure their crops by taking advantage of existing three schemes. They are Modified National Insurance Scheme (MNAIS), National Agriculture Insurance Scheme (NAIS) and Weather based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS). Besides these schemes, Coconut Palm Insurance Scheme (CPIS) is also applicable in some parts of the country.