| dc.description.abstract | This „Briefing Paper“ discusses options for improving the
communication of seasonal rainfall forecasts to smallholder
farmers, taking Kenya as its example. Smallholder farmers
depend on rain-fed agriculture in most of sub-Saharan Africa.
Over time, they have adjusted their planting patterns and
farming calendar to the onset, duration and end of the rainy
seasons. However, with changing rainfall due to climate
change, their planting patterns and farming calendar no longer
match seasonal rainfall distributions, which often leads to crop
losses. Seasonal rainfall forecasts are thus crucial for the provision
of early warning information and, if used by farmers, can
enable them to adjust their planting seasons and farming
calendar.
Yet farmers are often undecided whether to follow the recommendations
of weather forecasts. As studies in Kenya
show, this is due to uncertainty about their reliability, the
limited ability of many farmers to comprehend the technical
language used by meteorologists and the lack of access to
detailed forecast information. Key actors in the communication
of seasonal weather forecasts to farmers include the
Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD), the Ministry of
Agriculture (MoA), the Ministry of Livestock Development
(MLD), the Ministry of Information and Communication and
the media. These actors are beginning to address some of
the challenges, but they should step up their efforts:
− The KMD needs to further downscale seasonal forecasts
spatially to locally homogeneous rainfall zones or to
weather-station level so that small-scale local variations
in rainfall patterns can be taken into account. This would
provide farmers with better information on their local
rainfall patterns.
− The MoA and MLD should institutionalise their role in
guiding the KMD in the communication of forecasts to
farmers and pastoralists. As the climate information
needs of smallholders are not adequately addressed by
the KMD, this demand-driven approach recently adopted
by the ministries as a pilot scheme may increase the influence
of the agricultural sector on the design and content
of forecasts and should therefore be continued.
− In collaboration with the KMD and the Ministry of Information
and Communication, the MoA and MLD should
explore the use of telephone short message services to
complement existing radio services for the communication
of ready-to-use forecasts.
− The MoA and MLD should hold pre-season forecast
workshops at which county agricultural extension officers
and officials of local meteorological stations can
discuss downscaled seasonal forecasts and the implications
for local agricultural production with farmers.
Such local-level partnerships and facilitated farmergroup
interactions can influence the strategies pursued
by farmers in response to forecasts.
Through these interventions, smallholder farmers are likely
to regain confidence in seasonal forecasts and use them in
agricultural production. | en |
