Presented in September 2015 at CSV Workshop, India by Mathieu Ouédraogo, CCAFS-WA ICRISAT.

1. An integral part of some CSVs
Climate information
services :
Climate Smart Villages Workshop, 3rd – 6th September 2015, Ludhiana, India
Ouédraogo M., CCAFS-WA ICRISAT

2. Usefulness of climate information
services in agriculture
• Climate information help to manage current climate
risk and build resilience to future.
• Climate information help to improve decision-
making in agriculture.
 Activities planning
 Crop management (e.g., timing of planting/harvest,
selection of crops; irrigation decision, etc.,
 Input use (e.g., fertilizer application)
 Product marketing,
 Herd management (e.g., when and how many animals to
sell)
 Etc.,

3. Seasonal forecast
 crop variety
 varieties
Onset forecast
 farm preparation
 optimum planting
Nowcasting
 flooding saving life (thunder)
Daily forecast
 use of fertilizer / pesticide
Ten-day forecast
 weeding, field work
Updating seasonal forecast
 second cropping
Ten-day forecast
 optimum harvesting
period
 rain during dry season
Before During cropping season Maturity/end season
Using climate information for early warning

4. Climate
information
Seasonal forecast Weather forecast Nowcasting
Local Pluridisciplinary
working Group
(Issue EWS)
Farmers
Agriculture
Livestock
Local
authority
Extensions
services Forestry
Rural
radio
Seed
growers
Rural radio Text messaging Social gatherings Bulletin
Stakeholders:
expertsanddecisionmakers
Community
Pest Disease
Control
Red Cross
Partnership for Early warning system

5. Target : 3 million farmers
Partnership for CI communication
 URAC network to disseminate climate
information services
 ESOKO ICT platform to disseminate climate
information services
 Crops value chain in Senegal & Burkina

6. Questions and challenges ?
Questions Challenges
Use of CI
- How to ensure that CI is well used by
farmers?
- Illiteracy in rural
- Capacity building of farmers
Dissemination of CI
- What mechanism of dissemination of CI is
effective to reach a maximum of farmers
including women and young?
- Institutional arrangements and
capacities
- Cost of services
Production of CI and agro-met advisories
- What kinds of CI do farmers need for
decision making in agriculture?
- How to produce CI based on the needs of
farmers? and for the small scale
(downscaling) ?
- How to translate climate information into
agro-advisories ?
- Availability of climate and weather
data at small scale (weak density of
weather station for the downscaling
of forecasts
- Quality of information
communicated to farmers
- Integration of local knowledge
All level
How to make evidence of benefits and value of
CI at all levels (farmer , project, national
levels)?
- Assessment approach and tools
- Ex-ante evaluation vs ex-post

7. Conclusion
CCAFS has to consider two important issues :
 Scientific issue :
• How to strengthen the capacity of met services to
produce CI for small scale (downscaling)?
• How to assess adoption and impact of CI?
(experimental design and analysis method)
 Institutional arrangements issue:
• What partnership to create for CI production and
dissemination ?