Opportunities to increase relevance of climate services for farmers
Maya Korb, MLWS 2022
Climate services are the provision of information to support decision-making.
Within the agriculture industry, climate services can offer farmers better resources to
prepare for or respond to climate variability. These services take many forms including
data, in-person collaboration, and evidence-based recommendations.
This report presents a review of the current state of global climate services to
deliver relevant information for use on the farm. In doing so, it also provides an overview
of the current challenges to meet farmers’ needs that exist with both climate data and
the explicit recommendations that come from climate service providers.
The data collected for this project was obtained by a literature review of global
sources to understand what climate services recommendations can be used to address
these outstanding challenges, utilizing research and implementation approaches from
around the world.
In summary, the findings of this research suggest a push towards greater
investment in localized climate service operations, which allow climate services
providers to better deliver information for more narrow time scales and spatial scales.
These localized climate services are more tailored to local communities or specific
farmers’ needs. These investments could also provide opportunities for farmers to
collect their own weather data for more specific forecasts. Furthermore, this report
recommends that climate service providers focus on supporting farmers through
variable weather events throughout the season through stronger knowledge transfer
approaches, which allow farmers to understand potential sources of uncertainty using
these recommendations.
Insights from the evaluation of climate services can help support local
decision-making – on the farm, within a community and in policy.
