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Add to Preferred SourcesFarmers in Uganda are keeping their crop yields high, thanks to improved weather data supplied by the UN Development Programme (UNDP)-backed push to modernize climate monitoring systems.
The majority of farmers in the East African country rely on rain to grow crops, but as that rainfall becomes less reliable and drought conditions increase, agricultural production has suffered.
These changing weather patterns across the region are testing age-old farming practices and making it harder for some growers to make a living and feed their families.
With financing from the Global Environment Facility’s Least Developed Countries, Fund and support from UNDP was the establishment of ‘one of the most complete weather monitoring systems in East Africa’, according to Pascal Onegiu Okello, Project Manager for the UNDP-supported SCIEWS Project in Uganda.
“With improved weather monitoring and reporting, we can help smallholder farmers to plant at the right time so that they are assured of their harvests. It also means improved access to risk-mitigation tools like weather-index-based insurance. More importantly, these integrated weather services are about saving lives,” said Mr. Okello Pascal.
Installing critical technologies throughout the country, and integrating improved climate information into decision-making processes, the project has increased the capacity of the national early warning network to forewarn and rapidly respond to extreme climate events, including drought.
The Government of Uganda has taken vital steps to modernise its National Hydro-Meteorological Services (NHMS) and provide its citizens with invaluable public services that can protect agricultural production, help people build long-term solutions for food security and climate resilience, and respond to rapidly-building storms.
The transformation of the Uganda NHMS is an exemplary case for other countries in Africa and forms an important part of the climate services backbone.
With these new services, farmers get up-to-the-minute weather information and improved crop forecasts that will help them know when to plant, when to harvest, and when to take their crops to market.
Original source: UN News
Published on 19 July 2018