On the face of it, the quiet and nondescript Illedu village in Chengalpattu district, about 110 km from Chennai, does not appear to be different from numerous other villages of Tamil Nadu. But it is indeed distinct from the rest as it is home to a laboratory that provides watershed-level weather forecasting.
Called Climate Lab, the facility captures the real-time data from different automatic weather stations established by the National Agro Foundation (NAF), a public charitable trust founded by C. Subramaniam, former Union Minister and a key architect of the Green Revolution, and disseminates the message to farmers through short messaging service (SMS) in Tamil. It also correlates real-time data with historical weather data before issuing agro weather advisory and crop advisory. While weather forecasting is being given twice a week (Tuesday and Friday), the crop advisory is provided to farmers for a crop of their choice.
“In our interactions with farmers and other stakeholders during the implementation of various watershed programmes in different districts of the State, we got the feedback that in some districts, clusters of villages received heavy rain, whereas block headquarters did not get any. This made us ponder over the need to develop watershed-based forecast modelling,” explains M.R. Ramasubramaniyan, executive director of the Foundation. Such variations in rainfall, especially during flowering and harvesting, often affects farming.
