Do you know what my neighbors call me nowadays? The Weather Man. They call me that not because I’m a meteorologist by profession or anything but because I sometimes inform them about the weather, the atmospheric conditions of our region so they can make their farm plans. I’m a young farmer, savvy and our kind depend heavily on the internet to go about our farming business. But the old generation of farmers, most are still reluctant on digital farming and complete reliance on the internet.
I use the normal weather apps that most of you farmers are using out there to check the weather. The predictions are really helpful to us but at the end of the day they’re only predictions. And a prediction can either be correct or wrong.
Saying this because sometimes some of the people I share the information with come complaining that I lied since it didn’t rain on a particular day I said it might rain. So they hold that against me. But I try as much as I can to defend myself and teach them about Weather apps.
“Don’t blame the boy,” sometimes someone comes to my rescue. “Even the weather forecast on TV is sometimes wrong.”
One thing most people don’t understand is that the climate changed like it always does after 40-45 years, and this climate of today is not the same one most people grew around. And since it’s new, most people including our meteorologists are still trying to figure it out. And it has been worsened by Global warming.
Global warming is real and its impact is being felt in almost everything. The weather patterns have changed and nowadays is not unusual to see rain in some weird times of the year. Today in Kenya there are regions that barely received rainfall in the past but today they receive rainfall while some that were traditionally categorized as rain areas being threatened by desertification.
What farmers need to understand is that times have changed, this is a different climate, and all this coupled with the impact of global warming, makes farming a one risky business. Today timely planning is only viable when you have irrigation in place but not when you’re depending on rain. If you are a risk taker, well, go ahead and cast your seeds and pray for rain. You might harvest; you might not and that’s the truth of the matter.
So much has improved for farmers in terms of the affordability of most farm inputs, the availability of market with competitive prices except for one thing: the unpredictable weather.