Farmers should be aware of climate changes to adapt their agricultural practices: this sounds simple. Yet in developing countries, an extra effort is needed to make sure that farmers can easily access critical information on evolving weather conditions.
Enter the Agro-climate tools for a new climate-smart agriculture brief, which was jointly published by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). This useful brief “outlines a number of valuable software tools that are already helping policy makers and farmers make better decisions in the face of climate change” and, at the same time, encourages potential donors to fund this cost-effective initiative.
Basically, these tools translate complex climate data into information that can allow decision-makers to assess the impact of different decisions on agricultural systems and livelihoods.
The applications on offer include the country-specific climate information and decision support system (IDSS) from Uruguay, which “integrates monitoring of weather and vegetation conditions, seasonal climate forecasts, soil water and water stress estimates within an internet-based GIS platform (www.inia.org.uy/gras/), informing climate risk management decisions from farm to national level.”; also available is the regional Africa RiskView, which takes a amalgamation of information including “globally-available rainfall data, crop parameters and livelihood information” and simplifies them into easily used “food security outlooks.”
The above examples clearly demonstrate that the major differentiation. For farmers, these software tools are easy to use and can help filter through large quantities of data so that the required climate information can be extracted and “climate-smart agriculture” can be properly implemented
For CCAFS‘ original news article, see: Agro-climate tools link farmers with crucial information.
Photo credit: J. Hansen/CCAFS