Week 3: What are the links between agricultural production and weather?

Archived English Discussions Agriculture and Climate Change
#1

Hello everyone,

We are now in Week 3 of our discussions. This week is about the links between agricultural production and weather.

Reliable weather information is important for farmers. If farmers have limited access to reliable weather forecasts, it can seriously constrain their ability to properly plan farming activities. This week, we’ll look at the importance of weather systems in broadcasts to farmers.

To kick off the discussion, we’d like to know:

  1.  What are farmers telling you about weather forecasts and their reliability?

  2.  How have you, as broadcaster, used (or not) weather reports in your broadcasts? 

  3.  Do you use more traditional weather prediction methods (rainmakers etc.) and if so, how have

you incorporated those into your broadcasts? Give us examples.

Also, this week, we will be talking about a specific weather information system with a special guest. In 2013, Farm Radio International and our radio and information, communication and technology (ICT) innovation lab, The Hangar launched a service called “Utabiri wa hali ya hewa” (Swahili for “Beep for Weather”). It is a radio and mobile phone service designed to enable farmers to receive important weather and agricultural information on their mobile phones. The farmers call into a radio station and promptly hang up (known as a beep), then receive a return call, free of charge, to listen to a recorded message.

To talk about this service, we’re glad to welcome Kassim Sheghembe, Farm Radio International’s ICT Officer in Tanzania, who will talk about how the Beep for weather system works and bring examples of how broadcasters have informed farming communities in Tanzania with Beep for Weather. He’ll also be there to answer questions throughout the week.

Enjoy the week!

#7

Hello Busi,

  1. Farmers are saying that weather forecasts helps them to know
    how they can plan their next day for both farming and daily healthy living.
    for example; when its going to rain they need to go somewhere they have to take an umbrella.
    1b) They are also saying that the forecasts are reliable as most of the time what has been
    predicted passes

  2. As a broadcaster, I have used the weather forecasts at the end of each programme
    presented, in order to remind the farmers what tomorrow will be like or sometimes I
    use the forecasts weekly

  3. No, I don’t use traditional weather prediction, but I use information only from the
    meteorological department from our country. This is so to avoid confusing the farmers
    and preventing backfires. By using information from reliable source like meteorological
    department, they will always back you up when things have not turned your way as predicted.

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#8

Hello everyone,

This is just a reminder that we are discussing the links between agricultural production and weather. As mentioned before we have a special guest this week, Kassim Sheghembe @Kassim who will talk about how the beep for weather system works. Remember, last week we talked about how you report on agriculture and climate change iaaues . This system will assist you in reaching out to your farmers out there.

This is what we would like to know from you:

  1. What are farmers telling you about weather forecasts and their reliability?
  2. How have you, as a broadcaster, used (or not) weather reports in your broadcasts?
  3. Do you use more traditional weather prediction methods (rainmakers etc) and if so, how have you incorporated those into your broadcasts? Give us examples.

Busi

#9

@Monica thank you for sharing and that means farmers appreciate your reporting on weather and use the information you share.

Let us hear from others too.
@Atengka @princeappiahgh @oluchichibuzor @smawerere @Blackmagic @birhanu @Godfred @Izack_Boniface @Inno8 @Jacqueline @jpeprah @Joseph @krizo @Mwesimus @MartinMwape @maekelesh @Nyangss @Peter_Balaba @pascalalex @Pauline_Kalumikiza_M @Sarkodie_Gideon @shalom @victorasumani @wengo @Wandeba

#10
  1. Hello busi farmer say the weather focus help them determin their tomorrow both in agriculture and their day to day life.eg when should they expect rain,when to have an umbrella
    1b) they also say the forecast are reliable most of the time
    2)As a broadcasater, ihave used the weather forecasts at the beginnig and end of each programme presented,in order to remind the farmers what tomorrow will be like
    3)No i don’t use traditional weather prediction but iuse information from the metreological department and some times google location
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#11

Hello everyone,

I’m Kassim Sheghembe working with Farm Radio International, Tanzania as ICT Officer. As Busi mentioned in the earlier post, in 2013 we worked with one Radio Station (Radio Sauti ya Injili) in the northern part of Tanzania. I worked with one journalist who would gather the forecasts, interview an expert and produce voice content and SMS content. Monday of each week, there is a new forecast. When the new forecast is ready, an SMS alert is sent out to the registered listener and a radio promo is played to tell listeners to beep to get the new weather information.

Our Weather Information contains weather forecast as well as an expert’s advice. We found that it is not enough to give only weather forecast to farmers because farmers dont know how to translate the forecasts into useful information. For example when the forecast says it will be 30 degree centigrade or 56 mm of rainfall. These are very technical, we need an expert to translate them into something that a farmer can understand as well as advice them on what to do on a particular weather condition.

With this information Farmers were able to make decisions on various farming activities for example when to apply pesticides, when is the right time to weed the farm, when to harvest. Also as mentioned in one of the post above, simple decisions as which day to go to the farm and which one they shouldn’t go because of things like rain.

Here is a link to give a better grasp of how the beep-4weather system was

When listeners leave a missed call on the advertised number, they get a call back with this information.

Kassim Sheghembe

#12

Farmers do follow the forecasts closely though not all believe in the forecasts they say it is misleading. They believe nowadays weather changes is only God who knows. For instance, We were informed about Elinino rains and farmers were told to prepare adequately. Some ignored and some used the opportunity to prepare fish ponds in preparation of the much overflowing water.
As a broadcaster, I have never used weather reports in my broadcast. This is because I do not have a weather information system.Much I depend on listeners who inform us direct through call inns on the weather updates in their region.
I do not use traditional weather predictions.

#13

Hi @wengo, what about the sources like meteorological agencies in the country? Here in Tanzania we have Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) which provide the weather information for free to the medias to help them disseminate. The Meteorological Agencies have these weather reports, like 10 days forecasts, 30 days forecasts or seasonal forecasts.

It is good to use a reliable source because as you say the weather information is very sensitive. You have to use the source that can be accounted for in case of any misinformation.

#14

Hello Kassim,
Welcome and thank you for sharing info on the technology for telling about weather. Hope this has benefited the people. I have enjoyed the Swahili piece though my Swahili is not strong, i have enjoyed listening!!
Hi Busi, thank you also for the update on our contributions to the discussion. And my other colleagues i am happy to read from you after contributing to week 3 of our discussion!

After hearing some piece, below is my contribution.

  1. What are farmers telling you about weather forecasts and their reliability?
    • Actually, the few farmers I have interacted with and other sections of people said when they hear weather forecasts on Radio and when some watch weather forecasts presented on TV, they cannot rely on it wholesomely saying such information is just to guess the situation or weather for a particular day.

• I also heard one man who said that us journalists tell them that it will rain tomorrow and it does not rain! That at times media stations highlight that it will rain in a certain place but instead it rains elsewhere! So it was as if they somehow do not fully trust such information.

  1. How have you, as broadcaster, used (or not) weather reports in your broadcasts?

As a Broadcaster I have done the following:-
• I have tried to translate especially the Seasonal outlook information given by the Uganda National Meteorological Authority to several Radio stations. The seasonal outlook information is given every after three months in a year to depict the general outlook over the various regions of Uganda. This gives information when the rain is expected, what farmers should do and what local authorities should put in place to help the communities deal with eventualities or disasters and other changes. For example; if it is a dry season and animals are lacking fodder or grass to eat or water to drink, the seasonal information is given to the farmers and they are told to be keeping hay and silage which is made out of fodder or maize stalks. They are told to use take the advantage of rains and keep feed for their animals. They are taught how to keep it and when it is very dry, that is when they can use it to feed their animals. However, when there are sudden changes before the three months elapse, new information is given by the meteorological authority for update.

• We keep on updating the public and the only good thing with this; the information is translated into local languages that are best understood by the majority.

• I also engage some experts in this area to talk in the local language best understood so that when people hear an expert explaining, they can trust the information and act accordingly.

  1. Do you use more traditional weather prediction methods (rainmakers etc.) and if so, how have
    you incorporated those into your broadcasts? Give us examples.

I do not ignore the local predictions especially by the people themselves. They even try to explain the direction that the rain comes from for a certain area or geographical location. But when they say things have changed now since the rains no-longer come from the same direction, that it can (rain) form from another direction and then it moves to our side then it pours (raining). This interests me to catch and highlight in the context of climate change or weather. Also, I do not rely so much on the daily forecasts given for fear of being misquoted since some people said journalists tell things that are not true about weather. What I do at times, I say it might rain today according to meteorology but due to changes we experience, it might not rain. That is how i try seasonal predictions.

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#15

Hi Kassim, We do have Meteorological Department here in Kenya. The challenge is being in a big Company that has more than 10 stations, everything is systematic. We have other stations that do have a software that tap weather updates. Being a younger station, am still waiting for the installation. Thanks

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#16

Hello everyone

In as much most of you have mentioned that you give weather forecast in your programs, we must also remember that if for any reason a farmer is not listening too your program at the time, they might miss the weather predictions.

Have you had time to check out the link Kassim shared? I find it interesting that it doesn’t matter what time of day, if farmers beep the number advertised for weather, they get a call back with recorder weather information. We all know the importance of weather in farming.

Check out the link and share your comments.

#17

Hello Kassim,
Welcome and thank you for sharing info on the technology for telling about weather. Hope this has benefited the people. I have enjoyed the Swahili piece though my Swahili is not strong, i have enjoyed listening!!
Hi Busi, thank you also for the update on our contributions to the discussion. And my other colleagues i am happy to read from you after contributing to week 3 of our discussion!

After hearing some piece, below is my contribution.

  1. What are farmers telling you about weather forecasts and their reliability?
    • Actually, the few farmers I have interacted with and other sections of people said when they hear weather forecasts on Radio and when some watch weather forecasts presented on TV, they cannot rely on it wholesomely saying such information is just to guess the situation or weather for a particular day.

• I also heard one man who said that us journalists tell them that it will rain tomorrow and it does not rain! That at times media stations highlight that it will rain in a certain place but instead it rains elsewhere! So it was as if they somehow do not fully trust such information.

  1. How have you, as broadcaster, used (or not) weather reports in your broadcasts?

As a Broadcaster I have done the following:-
• I have tried to translate especially the Seasonal outlook information given by the Uganda National Meteorological Authority to several Radio stations. The seasonal outlook information is given every after three months in a year to depict the general outlook over the various regions of Uganda. This gives information when the rain is expected, what farmers should do and what local authorities should put in place to help the communities deal with eventualities or disasters and other changes. For example; if it is a dry season and animals are lacking fodder or grass to eat or water to drink, the seasonal information is given to the farmers and they are told to be keeping hay and silage which is made out of fodder or maize stalks. They are told to use take the advantage of rains and keep feed for their animals. They are taught how to keep it and when it is very dry, that is when they can use it to feed their animals. However, when there are sudden changes before the three months elapse, new information is given by the meteorological authority for update.

• We keep on updating the public and the only good thing with this; the information is translated into local languages that are best understood by the majority.

• I also engage some experts in this area to talk in the local language best understood so that when people hear an expert explaining, they can trust the information and act accordingly.

  1. Do you use more traditional weather prediction methods (rainmakers etc.) and if so, how have
    you incorporated those into your broadcasts? Give us examples.

I do not ignore the local predictions especially by the people themselves. They even try to explain the direction that the rain comes from for a certain area or geographical location. But when they say things have changed now since the rains no-longer come from the same direction, that it can (rain) form from another direction and then it moves to our side then it pours (raining). This interests me to catch and highlight in the context of climate change or weather. Also, I do not rely so much on the daily forecasts given for fear of being misquoted since some people said journalists tell things that are not true about weather. What I do at times, I say it might rain today according to meteorology but due to changes we experience, it might not rain. That is how i try seasonal predictions.

#18

Dear Busi.

As earlier said, i have listened to the pieces that Kassim mentioned about in the link that he gave. Such technology is also being piloted here in the cattle corridor of Uganda which stretches from South Western part of Uganda up to South Sudan if i may say. It is indeed a long dry stretch where you find cattle keepers, herders, transhumants (cattle and cattle keepers movements), farmers etc. Many people have cattle a long the corridor, but they face a lot of challenges since it is a semi-arid long stretch. So some cattle keepers and the local government officials in the departments of production, agriculture have been provided with hand-held devices (phones) on which they get daily weather information from the weather stations which information is also given to the farmers. Then the local government officials from the districts where the project is being piloted use the local radio stations to inform the people/cattle keepers. This has helped a lot and the cattle keepers no-longer lose their animals as it was before. This is because the info given is timely and yet it provides them with the skills on how to go about dry spells.

#19

  1. Generally, farmers are gradually becoming familiar with weather updates on our radio programmes. However, some of them still do not trust the predictions especially when the forecasts give out general information and it does not rain in their area. In spite of that, they have no alternative than to rely on the radio information as other farmers experience the what they hear and are beginning to share with their peers on the radio programmes.

  2. As broadcasters we have created special slots for weather updates on our news and agricultural programme in both English and the local language (Dagbani), most farmers are beginning to rely on these information to plan for the season.

  3. Her in the north of Ghana, we no longer use traditional weather predictions to disseminate weather information to farmers as these systems are diminishing due to global warming and climate change factors.

#20

In Nigeria, it must be clearly stated that Community Radio Stations that serve farmers and settlement communities are still at infancy stages of development. After several years of advocacy and discussion the Nigerian Government approved the licensing of Community Radio and we came very close to talking with the farmers. Hitherto, whatever information Nigerian farmers receive comes mainly from state owned and private commercial radio stations. Some of these stations honestly have dedicated contents for farmers and farming communities. Even before the issues of climate change became very critical and took center stage in global discussions, information that can help farmers like use of improved seeds, weather forecast, information about availability of synthetic fertilizers and how farmers can access the fertilizer, how to prepare farmlands and even generate natural and climate friendly fertilizers etc. were given out on available state and private commercial radio stations.
The major issue this week is:
• What are farmers telling broadcasters about weather forecasts and their reliability? Before now the Nigerian Meteorological Services NIMET has been very active in supplying weather information to the entire nation on regular basis across the Aviation, Agriculture, Broadcasting, etc. sectors but nobody has done anything extra to ensure that farmers really get the weather related information for their farming practice. From my experience, the farmers are not telling the Broadcasters much about weather forecasts and their reliability. This is because the weather forecast information is given out to radio-listening public generally. No serious effort has been made especially in Nigeria to direct these weather messages to the farmers in a way they can understand it and apply them to their farming businesses. Farmers are not telling me much about weather forecasts, so they also hardly talk about reliability of the forecasts not because the information is not there or reliable but because they do not understand what was given to them.
• How have you, as broadcaster, used (or not) weather reports in your broadcasts? I have used weather reports in my broadcasts regularly as they are received from Nigeria Meteorological service NIMET.
• Do you use more traditional weather prediction methods (rainmakers etc.) and if so, how have
you incorporated those into your broadcasts? Give us examples. I have not used any traditional weather prediction methods in my broadcasts. What I have used is the conventional weather forecasts system provided by the national meteorological services department.

#21

Hi @Kassim

Thanks a lot for this brilliant contribution. I am learning a lot from it. Your experience taught me two things, which seem very interesting. The first is the way you combine mobile phone and radio, but not without previously collecting and producing information.

The second point concerns the way you adapt weather information so that farmers can access it. They need empirical data more than figures, which don’t mean anything to them.

At the same time, this means that as far as radios are concerned, it is not enough to collect weather information, even though it is available to broadcast if we truly want to have a real impact. Radio broadcasters must rewrite the collected information.

So, my question is the following: how can we develop skills within our radio stations?

Inoussa

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#22

I wish to appreciate the contribution submitted by Kassim and IMaiga, True radios may not have the capacity to collect accurate weather data. But if online information is used well farmers can get the right information. for instance if you visit this site http://www.yr.no/ you will be able to search for the area of your choice and get the right weather information. You can download and use the Radio to update the farmers or use the frontlineSMS platform to reach out to farmers. this is the way we use online information to update farmers in Nakaseke Community Radio-Uganda.

1 Like
#23

This is great, I like the fact that broadcasters provide relevant weather information to the farming audience.

It is also a good practice to reinforce your broadcast messages through other means of technology. I like @IMaiga’ s comment on combining mobile phone with technology with not without collecting and producing information. @krizo mentions that in Nigeria farmers mostly get information from state owned stations but I believe even the new community stations can now be able to use this method to reach the farming communities. It is a known fact that people might miss certain information on radio and might depend on repeats if any. When messages are reinforced through mobile technology, one can be sure that they can reach more people. @Peter_Balaba also mentions frontlineSMS which is another way of sending bulk messages.

I believe if broadcasters can use whatever means available to provide information, they will certainly make a mark. Getting feedback from farmers is also crucial.

#24

Hi @smawerere,

Thank you for your good contribution on this. Recently I attended a learning event organized by WMO (World Meteorological Organization. One of point came out strongly and that is the predictability of weather. There is no forecast that is 100% sure that the weather will be like so even with the satellite weather system there is a degree of it to change. It is well known that weather forecasts are probabilities. It may or it may not rain, the point is there is a high chance of raining.

The question raised during the event was, how can we deal with the probabilities? How can we make people/ service users understand that all the forecasts are probabilities? At the same time make them understand the importance of these predictions and how they can better use to make their day to day decisions. Keeping in mind that there is a chance of things to change.

#25

Dear @kassim we need not to give up giving updates to our farmers just because weather forecast are predictions. It is our mandate to read different predictions and time to time inform the farmers as the weather changes. I always visit http://www.yr.no for any weather changes.

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