Rao, K P C and Kadiyala, M D M and Dhulipala, R and Bhagyashree, S D and Gupta, M D and Sreepada, S and Whitbread, A M (2019) Delivering climate risk information to farmers at scale: the Intelligent agricultural Systems Advisory Tool (ISAT). Working Paper. CCAFS, Wageningen, Netherlands.
|
PDF
- Published Version
Download (3MB) | Preview |
Divisions
Research Program : Innovation Systems for the Drylands (ISD)
Additional Information
This work was implemented as part of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements. For details please visit https://ccafs.cgiar.org/donors. The views expressed in this document cannot be taken to reflect the official opinions of these organizations. The Sehgal Foundation is also gratefully acknowledged for additional financial support.
Abstract
One of the strategies for helping smallholder farmers cope with climate variability and change is the provision of climate services that better decision making around the planning and management of agricultural systems. However, providing such services with location specific timely and actionable information to millions of farmers operating across diverse conditions requires innovative solutions. ICRISAT and its partners have developed and piloted one such system called “Intelligent agricultural Systems Advisory Tool – ISAT” capable of generating and disseminating data driven location specific advisories that assist farmers in anticipating and responding to the emerging conditions through the season. Using a decision tree approach, a structured and systematic approach to decision making was devised that considers the insights obtained from the analysis of historical climatic conditions, climate and weather forecasts and prevailing environmental conditions. Microsoft India developed a platform to access real time data from various ‘public’ sources, perform the data analytics, implement the decision tree and generate and disseminate messages to farmers and associated actors. The ISAT generated advisories are designed to support both pre-season planning and in-season management. During the 2017 monsoon, ISAT was piloted with 417 farmers across four different locations. The messaging system worked extremely well in picking appropriate location specific message from the database and delivering the same to the mobiles of the registered farmers. Mid and end season surveys revealed that more than 80% of the farmers from all villages were satisfied with the frequency, relevance and understandability of the messages delivered. About 58% of the farmers rated the messages are reliable by being correct more than 75% of the times and helped them in managing their farms better by conducting farm operations timely with reduced risk. Compared to farmers in the control villages, groundnut yields of farmers in 5 treatment villages are higher by ~ 16% but this results varied between -7.7 to 56.2%. This study has demonstrated the opportunities available to harness the untapped power of digital technologies to provide actionable advisories timely to smallholder farmers using appropriate data analytics and information dissemination systems.
| Item Type: | Monograph (Working Paper) |
|---|---|
| Divisions: | Research Program : Innovation Systems for the Drylands (ISD) |
| CRP: | CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) |
| Series Name: | CCAFS Working Paper no. 243 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Climate information services; smallholder farmer; Decision tree; Decision making; Seasonal climate forecasts; Data analytics; Climate variability; Groundnut farming; Risk management; Mobile messages; ICT Applications; Information services; Intelligent agricultural Systems Advisory Tool – ISAT; Climate services; ISAT tools; Data analytics; Anantapur; Andhra Pradesh; iSAT |
| Subjects: | Others > Andhra Pradesh Others > Climate Risk Others > Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) Others > Smallholder Farmers Others > Farming Systems Others > Indian Agriculture Others > Information and Communications Technology |
| Depositing User: | Mr Ramesh K |
| Date Deposited: | 05 Mar 2019 05:53 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Jan 2020 03:08 |
| URI: | http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/11074 |
| Links: | |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Altmetric
Altmetric