Economic impact of the agro meteorological advisory services of Ministry of Earth Sciences - A review

ESSO-MoES is making constant efforts to improve prediction of weather, climate and hazardous events for societal, economic and environmental benefits. For this it is making huge investments in terms of infrastructure growth, up-gradation of technical knowledge and human resource development. These new technical capabilities offer the promise of much improved forecasts and reliable service and this has been established through some of the recent skilful predictions of extreme events that occurred over the country. However, it is important to justify the spending through evaluating the economic benefits of the services. ESSO-MoES, regularly undertakes studies to carry out the impact assessment and benefits of the services it renders in economic terms. This paper is a review of the studies carried out in various phases, involving impact assessment and economic benefit of the Agromet Advisory service being rendered by ESSO-MoES. The studies indicate that over the years there is a definite increase in the economic benefits with improvement in the, outreach and worthiness of the service which is direct fallout of improved weather predictions as a result of the huge investments being made by Government of India.