LMKT Launches Accurate Weather Forecasting Information for Farmers

LMKT has launched real-time, location-based weather information for farmers as a part of the Smart Kisan web portal developed for its project with the Department of Agriculture (DOA), Government of Punjab. The project aims to build and support productive and efficient farms by leveraging modern ICT platforms, such as the Smart Kisan web portal and Agri Assistant mobile application, to develop and communicate accurate and relevant agronomic advisories to farmers.

The newly launched weather feature enables the monitoring of current weather conditions, forecasts (up to 48 hours), trends (monthly/ yearly) and history (last 15 years) relevant to each farmer’s marked location. It incorporates embedded APIs from different sources to provide farmers with location-based current, future and historic weather related data including minimum, maximum and average temperatures, humidity and precipitation levels, wind speed and direction, and sunshine hours.

The collective weather information in conjunction with the soil sample analyses results pertaining to each farm will empower farmers to plan for and determine the optimum planting and harvesting period. The real-time wind speed and direction will enable them to effectively spray insecticides and pesticides; while understanding rainfall patterns will help them adjust the water provided to the crops efficiently. Additionally, as a part of phase 2 of this project, agronomic experts at call centers will be able to access the aforementioned information to provide farmers with accurate advisories relevant to their farms in order to enhance crop yield, expand area under cultivation, and optimize the crop mix to ensure maximum returns.

This project is in line with LMKT and the DOA’s collective mission of revolutionizing the agri-tech industry of Pakistan by making agriculture cost effective and knowledge-based, with an emphasis on farmer’s welfare.