Bangladesh plans to send weather forecasts by automatic SMS to the mobile phones of farmers registered for the farmer card. In normal times a message will go every six hours; in rain, storms or heatwaves, warnings will be sent as often as needed. The Agricultural Information Service (AIS) under the Department of Agricultural Extension will run it, Agricare24 reports.
Weather messages are one of ten services planned for the card. Others include input support, low-interest credit, irrigation and crop insurance. Officials say timely forecasts would let farmers plan irrigation, fertiliser and pesticide use and harvesting in advance, cutting both disaster losses and production costs.
The programme targets are unchanged: about 24 million farmers in four years, 4.3 million of them in the 2026-27 fiscal year. In 1,681 agricultural blocks, data on 2.2 million farmers has been collected and 900,000 bank accounts opened so far, and the current phase began in 77 upazilas of 56 districts on 1 October.
Deputy programme director Md. Rakibuzzaman Khan says a reliable database will make it easier to match training, technology and enterprise support to what farmers need. Md. Yasin, additional secretary of the agriculture ministry's farmer card cell, says the aim is to keep farmers' records and get government help to them simply and effectively.
Agriculture secretary Md. Selim Khan says automatic weather messages will add a new dimension to integrated farm services. For a grower in the field it means forecasts, credit and insurance on one card, once he has registered and opened a bank account.
Photo: Samdani.srabon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Agricare24
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