Agrometeorological Forecast for Smallholder Farmers: A Powerful Tool for Weather-Informed Crops Management in the Sahel

Abstract

Agriculture production in Nigerien rural areas mainly depends on weather variability. Weather forecasts produced by national or international bodies have very limited dissemination in rural areas and even if broadcast by local radio, they remain generic and limited to short-term information. According to several experiences in West Africa, weather and climate services (WCSs) have great potential to support farmers’ decision making. The challenge is to reach local communities with tailored information about the future weather to support strategic and tactical crop management decisions. WCSs, in West Africa, are mainly based on short-range weather forecasts and seasonal climate forecasts, while medium-range weather forecasts, even if potentially very useful for crop management, are rarely produced. This paper presents the results of a pilot initiative in Niger to reach farming communities with 10-day forecasts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—Global Forecast System (NOAA-GFS) produced by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). After the implementation of the download and treatment chain, the Niger National Meteorological Directorate can provide 10-day agrometeorological forecasts to the agricultural extension services in eight rural municipalities. Exploiting the users’ evaluation of the forecasts, an analysis of usability and overall performance of the service is described. The results demonstrate that, even in rural and remote areas, agrometeorological forecasts are valued as powerful and useful information for decision-making processes. The service can be implemented at low cost with effective technologies making it affordable and sustainable even in developing countries. Nonetheless, the service’s effectiveness depends on several aspects mainly related to the way information is communicated to the public.

The contribution of weather forecast information to agriculture, water, and energy sectors in East and West Africa: A systematic review

“…Though all of the included studies focused on agriculture, the information Frontiers in Environmental Science frontiersin.org accessed by users differed based on whether they were into animal husbandry or crop farming. The majority of the studies reported that for users in crop farming, the climate information needed or accessed was related to rainfall and temperature, such as the onset of rains, rainfall distribution and amount, end of rains, the intensity of the dry season, dry spells, and the speed of winds during the rainy season (Rasmussen et al, 2015;Amegnaglo et al, 2017;Diouf et al, 2019;Radeny et al, 2019;Bacci et al, 2020;Partey et al, 2020;Antwi-Agyei et al, 2021c). Some studies reported that pastoralists needed or accessed extra information such as the outbreak of livestock and crop pests/diseases (Oyekale, 2015) and the availability of grazing resources (Rasmussen et al, 2015).…”

Application of Agent-Based Modeling in Agricultural Productivity in Rural Area of Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

“…Cane et al [100] showed maize yields were correlated to seasonal rainfalls. Many farmers showed interest in receiving weather forecast information from radio broadcasts in Benin, West Africa [101]. Farmers in Benin found that access to extension services helped them to understand the usefulness of information [39].…”

Access, Uptake, Use and Impacts of Agrometeorological Services in Sahelian Rural Areas: The Case of Burkina Faso

“…During the last years, collaborative approaches for co-development of WCS are being deployed in order to include users early in the design of the services [2,14]. Vincent et al [9] aim for a process of co-production implying an adaptation of the workflow "moving from supply-driven to demand-driven models" and applying an iterative model of co-learning establishing long-term relationships and trust between producers and users [15,16].…”