Atmanirbhar Krishi App to Help Farmers with Timely Weather Alerts & Actionable Agricultural Insights

The centre introduced the "Atmanirbhar Krishi App" on Tuesday to offer farmers timely agricultural information and weather alerts. 

Farmers may now access a variety of information compiled by several government departments on the national digital platform "KisanMitr" through the "Atmanirbhar Krishi App" in a way that is understandable to them. 

Farmers, start-ups, Krishi Vighyan Kendras, Self Help Groups, and NGOs can use the app, which is accessible in 12 languages and is free to download on Android and Windows. 

During the launch, Principal Scientific Adviser to Government K VijayRaghavan remarked, "With the Atmanirbhar Krishi app of the KisanMitr initiative, farmers will have evidence-based information generated by our research organizations like IMD, ISRO, ICAR, and CGWA in their hands." 

This data, when utilized by farmers to make decisions about planting patterns, small farmer mechanisation, or stubble burning, would guarantee that decisions are made with the priority of water and environmental sustainability, as well as sensible resource usage, he said in a statement. 

He also said that an app available on a basic phone with information in a language understandable by farmers will promote fairness during the decision-making process. 

According to the government, the app was created with lower bandwidth in mind due to connectivity concerns in rural areas of the country. 

The farmer's inputs are not collected by the app. To offer meaningful data, it relies on the farm's geo-location. By entering the pin code of a different location, data relevant to that area can be collected. 

Raja Seeva, the Founder Trustee of the Bengaluru-based Indian Centre for Social Transformation (ICST), is one of the primary stakeholders in the development of this app and KisanMitr.