Climate Exchange

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ommunities

low levels of cash and labour investment, and acts as

a major deterrent in optimizing input use and taking

advantage of improved technologies. We consider this

as one of the primary reasons for low levels of adop-

tion of improved technologies in the drier areas.

Perception 3: climate forecasts are unreliable

In general, both farmers and the general public view

climate forecasts with a lot of scepticism. Much of

this is due to the misunderstanding and misinterpre-

tation of the forecasts that come with different time

steps, different levels of prediction skill and differ-

ent spatial resolutions. Often users cannot generally

distinguish between short-range weather forecasts

and long-range climate forecasts and their potential

applications. Seasonal climate forecasts can form

a basis for farmers to plan and manage their farms

better, since many management decisions such as

crops and the varieties to be planted, proportions of

land to be allocated to various crops and the level of

investment on inputs need to be taken well before

the season starts. Despite their value and useful-

ness of forecast information, its use by smallholder

farmers remains very low because of perceived poor

reliability, lack of awareness of the potential applica-

has grown. The implication of this unsupported perception is that

farmers do not pay adequate attention to the actual yield-limiting

factors such as soil fertility since they strongly believe that climate

change is the main driver for low productivity and that not much

can be done to manage it.

Perception 2: climate is too risky

Farmers are well aware of the season-to-season variability in their

climates. They generally classified the seasons as good, not so good

or average, and very dry or poor based on criteria that included

factors such as crop yields, early and late onset of the rainy season,

and the amount and distribution of rainfall. Most farmers were able

to recollect how the season that preceded the survey was, with 49

per cent able to recall the conditions that existed during the previ-

ous 10 seasons over five years (there are two seasons per year in

Kenya). In general, there is a good consensus between the farmers’

rating and the observed conditions for seasons that are either good

or poor, except for one or two seasons out of the 10. However,

their ability to estimate the frequency distribution of different

events and discern long-term trends is more subjective. Farmers

tend to attach greater significance to negative events or impacts,

which leads to a biased estimation of the frequency of occurrence

of negative events. This has important implications in their assess-

ment of risk and in subsequent decision-making. Their perception

of higher risk results in a preference for techniques that require

A farmer group in Mwala, Machakos, Kenya doing an exercise aimed at understanding variability in rainfall and evaluating the reliability of seasonal climate forecasts

Image: ICRISAT