The IMD declared in an order dated January 17 that the district agriculture and its services would not be continued past the current fiscal year. Thus, as the order said, you are kindly requested to take the necessary steps for district agriculture unit services to be discontinued and for the 199 DAMUs that are currently in operation to be wound up. The minutes of the Finance Ministry’s Expenditure Finance Committee meeting from February of last year state that a senior Niti Ayog Advisor recommended reevaluating whether staffing each DAMU was really necessary.
Given that the data collection is automated, it is proposed that the Ministry of Earth Science consider using centralized units rather than field units. The employees at the units claim the choice will have an immediate effect on thousands of farmers in these 199 districts spread across 32 states and Union Territories. The agriculture ministry’s scientists have also recognized that DAMUs help farmers become more resilient to climate change, and they also mentioned that the short-term effects of DAMU service termination will be more noticeable.
In order to help farmers make daily decisions, the government introduced the Gramin Krishi Mausam Seva in 2015. This program offers farmers comprehensive advisories specific to their location and crop. Through the years, 130 agromet field units have been established nationwide in agroclimatic zones in partnership with the Indian Council of Agriculture Research. AMFUs cover four to five districts at a time and offer advisories at the zonal level. In 2018, the government established 530 district agromet units on the grounds of Krishi Vigyan Kendras in an effort to broaden the scope of GMSV. Only 199 DAMUs could be installed due to the process disruption caused by the COVID pandemic. Agromet Observer and SMS Agromet make up DAMU’s two staff members.
Block-level agromet advisories are provided by DAMUs as opposed to AMFUs. It offers detailed local news, much like a regional newspaper. DAMUs helped scientists and farmers communicate more effectively. Farmers can ask us questions over the phone or in a WhatsApp group. Mahesh Yudulwar, a Maharastra-based DAMU employee, stated.
The decision to close down DAMUs will have an impact not only on the families of their 398 employees nationwide but also on the thousands of farmers who rely on them for vital agromet advisories that have helped them become more resilient to the effects of climate change and worsening weather, thereby lowering their losses and the amount of money they can claim under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, he said.
The problem, according to Yadulwar, is that KVKs have a small workforce, and the additional duties will make them busier and ultimately have an impact on the entire process. The challenge emerged, according to G. V. Ramananeyulu, an agricultural scientist with the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, because a parallel system was developed rather than integrating the preexisting systems. According to him, training individuals in gram panchayats and farmer-producers organizations could be a solution.
