Saving Small scale Farmers One Forecast at a time

You are here: Home / Stories/

Published: November 1, 2018

“Given the clear sky tonight, tomorrow will definitely be a sunny day” Traditionally, farmers in Kirinyaga county especially those I talked to from Mukure ward are used to forecasting the weather using such observations. Insights gained from Kirinyaga county offices confirmed these sentiments. Additionally, the farmers also depend on the media. The media sensitizes them on the overall amount of rain to expect in a given season.

These methods are not always accurate. Dennis, a small-scale farmer who had recently farmed tomatoes on his one-acre piece of land. Narrated how unexpected convectional rainfall negates desired results of spraying tomatoes. Such unexpected weather events leave him worried. Worrying whether to re-spray the crops again and incur input and labor costs or assume and hope for the best results. Either way the overall morale is affected.

Initiatives such as Digifarm by Safaricom have been helping farmers have access to markets, education material, loans and inputs. In Kirinyaga Digifarm set up a digishop in Mwea early this year. Agriculture officials from Kirinyaga informed me that the shop mainly serve rice irrigation farmers but is also open to other farmers. Mercy Corps officials in Nairobi added that currently Digifarm have 950, 000 farmers registered across the country. They reach the farmers through their phones. Such already established platforms can be used to send weather forecast to farmers like Dennis.

Mkulima Bora co-founder believes that weather data should free. However, he admitted that, methods of collecting and sending the data cost money. Even if provided freely, raw weather forecast data might be complicated for farmers to comprehend. Mercy Corps Agricultural Manager therefore suggested that adding value to the weather forecast is of equal importance. Mkulima Bora is an online platform that connects close to 10 000 farmers to markets and farm inputs.