WOTR Hosts Educational Webinar Series to Help Farmers Combat Irregular Monsoons

WOTR, a leading globally recognized non-profit organization in India, hosted a series of webinars for farmers in Maharashtra to guide them to combat irregular monsoon conditions. Through these sessions, WOTR aimed to create awareness about erratic monsoon patterns and various ways to tackle the impact of unfavorable monsoon on agriculture inputs.

Commenting on the sessions, Prakash Keskar, Executive Director, WOTR, said, “Farmers of the country are facing a serious danger from climate change. Irregular rainfall is a climate change-related problem affecting farm production significantly. The small and marginal farmers have been losing crops and incomes due to irregular rainfall patterns over the past few years. Therefore, there is an acute need to educate them to tackle such unfavorable scenarios. We received an overwhelming response to the educational webinars from the farmers and look forward to hosting more informative events in the future.”

“In order to support the farming communities, we have upgraded our FarmPrecise app to allow them to be informed about the weather conditions based on prior rainfall data and make appropriate choices,” he added.

Along with WOTR representatives, Manikrao Khule (Ret. Meteorologist, IMD) and Vivek Kale, Branch Manager, Central Bank of India, also participated in the webinars and instructed the farmers on facing irregular rainfall in the area.

Khule highlighted the key aspects of intermittent rainfall, its impact on agriculture, and multiple ways to deal with the challenges of such erratic patterns. During this webinar, Vivek Kale, Branch Manager, Central Bank of India, informed the farmers about the crop loans available for the next Kharif season and the various processes involved in availing agriculture financing schemes offered by the public sector banks.

About Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR)

Established in 1993, WOTR is a non-profit organization that engages at the intersection of practice, knowledge, and policy across scales and in collaboration with various stakeholders across sectors. Our goal is to ensure water and food availability, along with livelihoods and income security – to support the sustainable growth and well-being of vulnerable and disadvantaged communities in rural India.

As of September 2021, WOTR, in collaboration with its partners, has worked in over 5,551 villages across 9 Indian states – Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. We have impacted more than 4.7 million people, trained over 576,000 people from across India and 63 countries and collaborated with 230 NGOs/ Project Implementing Agencies (PIAs), and promoted over 15,900 SHGs involving 195,000 women.