Kashmir farmers to reap benefit with installation of automatic weather station

Kathua, Apr 1 (ANI): Farmers in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua District have expressed happiness over the installation of Automatic Weather Station (AWS), which would help them in avoiding eventualities in the backdrop of unfavourable weather conditions.

Omkar Singh, a farmer appreciated efforts of the meteorological department for setting up automatic weather station, which would provide information about weather forecast and climatic changes predicted in the region.

"The agriculture in this region is dependent on the climate. This region has different kinds of seasons. Sometimes it rains and sometimes windstorm occurs, which affects the crops. Now, we know that in Farm Science Centre, an instrument has been fixed, which would help us in knowing the kind of climate prevailing in the regions from any Science Centre and accordingly we can cultivate the crops," said Singh.

The Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) is a district level Farm Science Centre, set up by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) for transmitting information instantly about weather to the farmers.

The Kathua region has approximately 1.30-lakh hectare area under farming. The major crops grown in this region are rice, wheat and maize.

Nearly 70 percent of the population of the district depends on agriculture.

Around 66.84 percent of the region comes under rain-fed area and the rest depends on artificial irrigation. In such circumstances, the weather report acts as a milestone for the farmers, as it helps them in minimising the economic losses that occur due to unfavourable weather.

Project coordinator at Krishi Vigyan Kendra in Kathua region, Amrish Vaid said that installation of automatic weather station would facilitate farmers to obtain information about weather forecast.

"In this era, it's a good instrument, through which we can easily connect to farmers and we can provide information to the farmers regarding cultivation, reaping and harvesting of the crops," said Vaid. (ANI)