From weather forecasts to farm decisions: How climate intelligence can build india’s agricultural resilience

Farm intelligence helps farmers not only determine whether it will rain, but what they should do about it.
| Photo Credit:
K K Mustafah

For generations Indian farmers have looked to the sky for the answer of when to sow, irrigate or harvest their crops. Two decades ago, weather forecast meant a radio news bulletin or a newspaper column carrying the rain news of a particular area

In today’s era, that equation is changing. Satellites, artificial intelligence, remote sensing and hyper local forecasts are beginning to make weather information actionable farm intelligence – helping farmers not only determine whether it will rain, but what they should do about it.

The change is reflected in the government’s Digital Agriculture Mission approved last year with a budget of ₹2,817 crore for a decade. Part of it will be used for AgriStack, the Krishi decision support system, and soil-profile mapping that put together generates produce, soil, weather and water data. The government aims to have farmer IDs of 11 crore farmers by 2026-27, apart from crop assessment through digital surveys.

Mausamgram ushers in the change

This is a huge improvement over the system that existed in the first decade of this century. The weather forecasts were then mostly confined to specific regions and were largely based on traditional wisdom. Now, it has become possible to provide forecasts at the level of a district, block and even the gram panchayat. The India Meteorological Department’s own MausamGram offers location-specific forecasts on rainfall, temperatures, humidity and wind, while their agro meteorological services tie in weather forecasts to agricultural advisories.

The most telling example of this transformation are a set of AI-based pilot forecasts for kharif 2025, which use a combination of 125 years of IMD rainfall data plus newer AI forecasting models to send out SMS updates on local monsoon-onset forecasts to more than 3.88 crore farmers across 13 states.Survey results in Madhya Pradesh and Bihar indicated that 31-52 per cent of farmers had changed decisions related to sowing, land preparation, choice of crops or inputs based on the forecasts.

In addition to rainfall forecasts, climate intelligence is contributing to agricultural production through the National Pest Surveillance System. By Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, the system analyses patterns to identify pests and crop diseases, supporting 66 different crops and over 432 different pest types. By December 2025, more than 10,000 extension workers are expected to be using the system.

Bharat-VISTAAR proposal

Another important proposal in the Union Budget 2026-27 is Bharat-VISTAAR, a multilingual AI tool that seeks to connect AgriStack portals to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s agricultural knowledge systems.

But technology alone will not make agriculture climate-resilient. Forecasts have to be disseminated to farmers in their local language, through media channels of their choice, and must be actionable information on which seeds to sow, when to irrigate, how much fertiliser to use, when to spray insecticides, and when to harvest. Smallholder farmers also need access to smartphones, connectivity, credit and insurance.

The last 20 years have been about taking Indian agriculture from being at the mercy of the weather to receiving weather forecasts. The next 20 years need to focus on taking Indian agriculture from receiving weather forecasts to taking action based on information. If the climate data can get to the farmer at the precise location, the precise moment and in a comprehensible manner, weather forecasting ceases to be a warning system and becomes one of India’s most powerful tools to protect its farms against an unpredictable climate.

The author is President & Co-Founder of the ESG & Decarbonization Practice at Earthood

Published on September 6, 2026