Women farmers cultivating their rice field, Central Java
I just had a conversation with a colleague who had been to a workshop to plan the dissemination of seasonal climate forecast in the Philippines. To decide when to plant corn or rice, farmers will have to use the computer model developed by an ACIAR project assuming that they have access to a computer. Where computer facilities are not available for farmers, an alternative is to get hold of the simplified version of the computer model from PAGASA.
Supportive innovation system
My back-of-the-envelope advice to my colleague is: For the seasonal climate forecast model to take off, the structure must be in place that will facilitate its adoption by farmers. PAGASA and the local government unit, which implements agricultural extension services in the Philippines, must be key partners in this innovation system. The local technician will serve as the conduit between the weather bureau and the farmers. However, the municipal agricultural officer will function only if the municipal mayor approves of his/her involvement in this initiative. This could come about if the mayor discerns a “win” for his LGU’s involvement. If the activities are part of an agency’s mandate or mission, then partnerships can easily be established. The question often left unspoken is: “What is in it for an agency to be involved in the project?”
Benefits from innovation
Granted that the kinks at the agency level will have been ironed out and formalized through some memorandum of understanding, at the extension technician-farmer chain, it is necessary to demonstrate the economic benefits that will accrue to farmers when they use seasonal climate forecast to guide their planting decisions. How much money will farmers gain per hectare per season if they adopted the seasonal climate forecast to make planting decisions?
Risk aversion
Apart from distilling technical weather data into a usable knowledge product or simple decision rule, there is also the element of risk that farmers have to contend with. In the face of climate change, the risks can be quite high. Thus, farmers need to be able to weigh the benefits and the costs (risks) involved in the use of seasonal climate forecasts for their planting decisions. As climate change has complicated the not-so-exact science of weather forecasting, how willing are farmers for this uncertain payoff?
Perhaps one way out of this is to organize farmers in groups to spread the transaction cost in accessing and using the seasonal climate forecast model. This may be done by tapping the facilities of the local government unit or the Techno Gabay program.
A parallel arrangement was done in the Mekong Delta to implement the “escape strategy” at the height of the brown planthopper (BPH)/virus disease outbreak in 2005-2006. Groups of farmers maintained light traps and the information was brought to the local plant protection center. The local technician analyzed the light trap data and made decisions when to plant rice to help farmers avoid the BPH. Read more about the “escape strategy” …
Can the risks n using rainfall data to decide when to plant be reduced? Will the benefit that will accrue to farmers outweigh the costs and risks involved? Please share your ideas by posting your comments.
11 comments
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July 30, 2008 at 10:47 am
Efren B. Saz
Dear Moni,
I can see several issues that can play into farmers decisions to follow or not a climate forecast such as the one envisioned. One basic question would be: What factors really play into farmers’ decision to plant? Let’s assume that climate does to a great extent. Now what of the climate? Will this be as important in irrigated systems? What of climate forecasts? Whose forecasts? Don’t farmers have their own forecasts too? How much weight do they give to forecasts like those of PAGASA’s? How frequent are these? How detailed are these? We’ve heard about micro climate. Now, is a seasonal forecast for northwestern Leyte for example, as applicable for farmers in Isabel as those in San Isidro? Will farmers in both places be convinced that these, in fact, are applicable to them? How many misses will it take the farmers to disregard any future forecasts (if PAGASA has not already lost credibility). Finally, how much will accrue to the farmers for adhering to these forecasts?
August 1, 2008 at 4:08 pm
jerwin capuyan
How will you make a kid believe that he/she’ll get a piece of chocolate from you after he/she sings, if you don’t have the chocolate with you? It will be hard I’m sure. Perhaps a seasonal climate forecast project will likely have the same fate unless the planners distill and simplify the innovation. There is a need to position the benefits that farmers can get from the innovation before they will try it out and adopt it.
By the way for those who doesn’t know yet, Seasonal Climate Forecast (SCF) is a forecast that is longer compared to that of weather forecasts. It’s good for three months or one cropping season or sometimes it would last to six months. We have a class project on this and our task is to make a video to convince and let the farmers apply SCF in their decision-making in planting their crop particularly corn. To be able to produce a video, first we need to develop a critical information package which includes the what, why, and how of the technology. This, we learned from our communication campaigns class. The “why” part will have to stress the benefits of the technology to persuade farmers to adopt it. We will need to show farm-level data demonstrating the benefits of SCF- that farmers’ profits increased after adoption, that farmers made good decisions on planting time, or similar stories. At the moment, SCF still needs simplification and ways must be explored to make it easier for poor, uneducated farmers to adopt it. We need help to distill and simplify research reports that we now have. We will be grateful for any Devcompage reader’s advice. Thanks.
August 1, 2008 at 5:12 pm
buenjosef
Lots of technologies have been developed by lots of local and international agricultural research agencies basically, to improve the yield of farmers and improve their lives. These novel technologies also help take Agriculture to higher grounds considering that it is the backbone of every civilization. However, not all of these developed technologies were applied by farmers for the reasons that some were really not applicable/feasible to their situation or were not effectively disseminated. Some technologies maybe effective to some areas only and not to others. Another thing is that the respective research centers lack knowledge in disseminating these agricultural innovations to be adopted by farmers. Some were only implemented at first but disregarded as time goes leaving the farmers to revert to their traditional cultural practices.
I am not an agriculturist nor a communications expert. But, in my experience as a Development Communication student at the Visayas State University, I have been exposed to some agricultural innovations generated by some research agencies here. In some of our major courses in DevCom, we are asked to popularize some technologies and research outputs. I found out that some of these technologies have yet to be disseminated. Some were implemented but did not prosper because the farmers ceased adopting it.
Some of the projects were funded at first or loaned that is why the farmers were eager to try it. Later, when the project was over, and the farmers were not convinced of the outcome, or lacked follow-up from the extensionist, that was when he discontinued to use the technology.
Now, regarding the SCF project which aims to help farmers’ decisions on when to plant, I personally think that – given the right communication strategies and the proven-and-tested SCF technology, this will be helpful to farmers. If the technology generators have done the thorough research on its feasibility to the farmers and its “percentage of error”, then it would be good news. In addition, if the technology is well disseminated and well accepted at the LGU level and the farmers, this project will be successful.
August 2, 2008 at 11:21 pm
cata
Readers of this blog, I present to you the possible factors/issues which could hinder the SCF project’s implementation. As of this writing, it is based both on facts and the author’s personal point of view.
Why is there a need for Seasonal Climate Forecast (SCF), when in the first place, most of the farmers mostly base their decision-making on what/when to plant on their experiences and instincts in predicting the weather and climatic condition? Considering this, convincing a farmer to adopt the SCF technology, for sure, would be difficult.
Another is that, as far as I know, a number of farmers hate to use complicated technologies (such as computers), and are usually techno-phobic. This factor, in fact, is one of the reasons why innovation in the agriculture sector is hampered. Low literacy of farmers can be the main underlying cause behind it. Less literate farmers would have a hard time understanding technical jargon used by the PAGASA in information dissemination, as well as learning how to operate the tools and gadgets (particularly computers), developed by the project planners.
Moreover, before farmers can adopt the project, they need to undergo trainings first. The problem however is, whether they are willing to do so. Again, farmers’ major concern is gaining income and improving it. Why would they waste their time (very precious to them) on something that doesn’t assure or guarantee them of earning a better profit? The project, for it to be worth risk taking should be capable of producing greater output, than the farmers’ inputs.
Another problem in adopting the SCF project is the occurrence of global warming or climate change. Because of this phenomenon, PAGASA’s climate forecast could be affected. Chance-encounter is that, the data from the PAGASA would become less accurate. As a consequence, farmers already utilizing the SCF project, likewise those interested and/or those planning to adopt the SCF, would become skeptics and would discontinue their adoption of the technology,. Further, when that happens, farmers would tell their friends (other farmers) that the technology is a failure or what we call in Cebuano and Tagalog as “kapalpakan”, making it a lot more difficult to convince other farmers to try the technology.
A technology can be considered futile if it cannot and does not serve its purpose. To prevent it from happening, technology promoters should conduct an in-depth research/study about the project’s feasibility. In addition, generally, when it comes to adoption of a certain technology, many farmers tend to be reluctant to adopt. Hence, there is also a need to correct farmers’ perceptions and attitude towards adopting technologies.
The road ahead of SCF is fraught with challenges.
August 3, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Monina Escalada
Efren, seasonal climate information is critical to farmers. In rice, wrong planting time might mean no irrigation water delivery or pest attack. But farmers often rely on their own observations of the weather to decide when to plant. Getting climate forecasts from PAGASA and keeping a historical record of that information to make decisions on the opportune time to plant is the modern way. Highly educated farmers or retired agronomists would likely do this and the SCF project will in the future introduce this to farmers. However, climate change has thrown the planting calendar out of kilter.
Jerwin, you are right. SCF has a tall order ahead — distill and simplify the information first before developing dissemination media such as a video or a poster.
Buen, it is true that with the right communication strategies, SCF will be helpful to farmers. The rationale behind SCF and other agricultural innovations is to help farmers. But an essential step in developing a communication strategy will require the stuff that Jerwin wrote about — it has to be simplified and tried out by farmers in their own farms, not by researchers doing research on farmers’ fields.
Cata, the need to use a computer model to generate a seasonal climate forecast can make interpretations of forecasts accurate. But as the term, “forecast” suggests, there is room for error. Who gets to use this computer model? The municipal agricultural officer of the extension worker? I don’t know. This and many other issues need to be carefully considered by the SCF project managers.
In thinking about disseminating an innovation, an important point to remember is the magnitude of reward that the intended beneficiary will derive from adopting it. As Wilbur Schramm noted, for the message to be attended to, the size of reward must exceed the effort required. Schramm has identified three types of effects that can be created (see Schramm, Wilbur. 1973. Men, Messages, and Media. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, pp. 200-214):
a) attention effect – a message must capture the attention of the audience before anything can happen;
b) main effect – after capturing the attention, the message must be accepted as part of the target audience’s cognitive structure;
c) action effect – to induce a given action, an appropriate cognitive and motivational system must gain control over a specific aspect of the target audience’s behavior.
August 5, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Neil Anthony
Having read the book “Diffusion of Innovations” of Everett M. Rogers made me ponder on this seasonal climate forecast (SCF) topic. The computer model to be used by this project is considered as an agricultural innovation. And this innovation would probably be successful if well implemented by the change agents, and diffused,adopted by the corn or rice farmers. In the book, Rogers articulated the five key characteristics of innovation. This helps to explain the different rate of adoption as perceived by the individuals(corn or rice farmers in this case).
Rogers also emphasized that innovations perceived by the individuals having greater relative advantage, compatability, trialability, observability and less complexity will be adopted more rapidly than other innovations. But what do these characteristics mean? According to Rogers, relative advantage is the degree to which one perceived the innovation as better than the idea it supersedes. Seasonal climate forecast should highlight the benefits that the rice and corn farmers will be receiving in exchange of the their cost and labor efforts. The more benefits they could acquire, the more the farmers would adopt the innovation. Compatability is the degree to which an innovation is perceived as being consistent with the existing values, past experiences and needs of potential adopters. This innovation, in my own opinion, is compatible since farmers really are in need of climate forecasts that are accurate. Third characteristic is the complexity which is a degree to which an innovation is perceived as difficult to understand and use. In this case, SCF information should be distilled in the simplest way that farmers will understand. Implementers should simplify the technical information regarding SCF. This is actually one of the things stressed out by the farmer respondents in the study of “Corn Farmers’ Decision-Making based on Probabilistic Climate Information”conducted at Malaybalay, Bukidnon. They suggest that the climate forecasts will use simple words and be downscaled to the respondents’ area. Trialability is the degree to which an innovation may be experimented with on a limited basis. I haven’t known a project that had used SCF. I guess, this is the first time SCF will be adopted in different areas in Leyte. It will be better if this was already sampled in other areas so that farmers would adopt the innovation faster. The last characteristic is the observability which is a degree to which the results of an innovation are visible to others. If farmers will see some previous results of the innovation, they will more adopt into it. But considering the fact that this will be the first time to be implemented, SCF will undergo more challenges. It was also found out in the study at Malaybalay, Bukidnon that farmers still depend more on the traditional climate forecasting than relying to SCF. However, this phenomenon will serve as a challenge to SCF implementers. Therefore, a lot of ‘think-think’ and work is to be done by various stakeholders in order to achieve the goals of this project.
August 11, 2008 at 10:19 am
Jimboy
The SCF technology is obviously a response to the global warming effects people are experiencing. Pattern of dry and wet season is totally altered, surfacing of new pests, to name few of the consequences of global warming. (Other consequences were better explained in Al Gore’s discussion – “An Inconvenient Truth.”
The idea of global warming has been in the discussion for quite sometime. But have the farmers embraced, or at least understand a bit, this idea? I don’t know if there is ever a statistics to answer this.
Now comes this innovation – SCF. This is still under the umbrella of the discussion of the global warming effects.
The challenges met in disseminating the global warming concept to farmers (a major stakeholder of this issue) will be a good benchmark in the diffusion of this innovation.
Discussions to farmers should include this to put their future decisions into clearer perspective.
August 13, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Paulo
I just started reading book written by Dr. Ronny Adhikarya, entitled Motivating Farmers for Action: How Strategic Multi-Media Campaigns Can Help last night. We were asked to make a book review out of tw books and this counts as one.
The book (which tackles the successful two successive rat campaigns in Bangladesh in 1983-1984) deals with effective planning and implementation of media campaigns. Its conceptual framework and guidelines could be applied to motivate and influence farmers to adopt and practice seasonal climate forecast (SCF) in their farming.
The authors highlighted reasons why innovations fail. One is the high cost/difficulty of access to the required inputs. Another is the lack of knowledge, motivation and skill of the intended users. Third is that the adoption is sometimes dependent on decision-making of many traditional societies, bound by their social, cultural and religious values and beliefs. I agree with the point cited by Cata, that farmers would greatly rely on their experiences in their years and decades of farming. So, why accommodate SCF?
In implementing media campaigns, the authors likewise laid out three things that have to be considered: technical soundness, benefits of the technology, training and education. Like what Jerwin said, planners must simplify and distill the contents of the innovation materials so that end-users (farmers) could easily understand the information.
The benefits or rewards on adopting the technology should be framed clearly. The farmers will look for the assured benefits, and not probable or theoretical ones. So, implementers should be ready to defend when they are asked what success proofs are at hand. This situation is not handy, especially that this is the first time SCF will be put into practice, I suppose.
Implementers should also provide opportunities for farmers to undergo trainings and education, another point that Cata made. The success of every agricultural innovation depends on the participation of the users- farmers.
August 18, 2008 at 6:45 pm
ella
SCF is a good innovation in the sense that it could in a way help farmers decide when to plant. It is good that a lot of discussion had been going on to help bring to light those things that are still groping in the dark. Hopefully, they will not remain in the dark forever since SCF could be very helpful to farmers, given that it will be properly implemented.
Those who left comments did give very good points. As it appears, SCF still has yet a very lengthy and foggy way ahead. But, such a complicated technology naturally begins with a lot of doubts and queries. Before dissemination strategies are carried on, there is a need to simplify information. I think, this is the issue that prompted involved social scientists to work–how could they bring information home to the intended audience? SCF is still in its infancy and it hasn’t made a way yet, as far as i know, but has still scratched the surface. I think, what they had been working on yet is on helping farmers understand the probabilistic nature of the weather forecast. As far as I know, this has been yet the farthest way they have reached.
Then again, there are still a lot to learn and find out before SCF is ready to take off. There is a need to convince farmers, especially those with low educational attainment to try SCF. This could be one big deal since these farmers already have existing rule-of-thumbs that they obtained from their own decade-long experiences in farming. Also, most if not all farmers have this ‘to-see-is-to-believe’ attitude. Probably telling the farmers about the current phenomenon global warming and its consequences to unpredictable weather changes might provide a good start. In other words, good and effective communication strategies should be developed. How SCF will be carried out should be clarified. No farmer would want added hassles to their already busy lifestyle.
However, we can never cross the bridge until we get there. There is still a lot of simplifying and convincing to do. As Everett Rogers quoted in his book, innovations that are perceived to be less complex will likely be adopted more rapidly than any other innovation.
August 19, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Marlon
It’s good that the topic on seasonal climate forecast has stirred the interest of many readers in Devcompage. Judging from the comments posted, I think there’s still a lot to learn about SCF especially that a lot of concerns and questions were raised by readers. Nonetheless, I think that Seasonal climate forecast is a good innovation and therefore should be packaged appropriately.
Let me share to you things that I know about SCF, since I have read several articles about this last summer. You see I was about to do my thesis on this topic that’s why I was “compelled” to read them.
Well Seasonal Climate Forecast has long been promoted by climate scientist because of its advantages. For all we know, climate plays an important role in agriculture since most of agriculture activities are dependent on it. This therefore make this innovation worthy of use. However it was reported that though SCF was proven beneficial to farmers, the number of people who use this information in their farming decisions, has changed insignificantly through the years. According to reports, its impact to farmers is low due to knowledge barriers as well as other factors (social, etc.) denting farmers’ motivation to use forecast and climate information. The low level of literacy among farmers has been identified that impeded them in using climate information; since they could not understand climate scientists’ language; along with farmers practices that deviates to that of SCF. Also the uncertainty of climate information has triggered farmers to doubt climate forecast and even discouraged them not to use it at all. This now prompts a challenge as to how this innovation should be packaged and what communication strategies should be used to bridge this gap.
As pointed out by ella and other readers, there’s really a need to simplify information especially that farmers find it difficult to understand the forecast. And because down-scaled forecast is still a challenge, part of campaign strategies should include improving farmers understanding on SCF’s uncertain characteristic. Also, a KAP survey would be very useful to address each concerns that farmers have on SCF (How much do farmers know about SCF, its probabilistic nature? What do they think about the innovation? Are they using the information? If yes, were there problems on the implementation?). The result of the survey will therefore determine what areas to focus and will guide us as to how can we address them. I think this is an important point for the DC broadcasting majors who are up for the challenge of creating a video for the campaign on SCF. The survey would help them determine as to how will they package the information and what to prioritize.
March 11, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Gian
I would like to quote on this statement by ella:
SCF is still in its infancy and it hasn’t made a way yet, as far as i know, but has still scratched the surface. I think, what they had been working on yet is on helping farmers understand the probabilistic nature of the weather forecast. As far as I know, this has been yet the farthest way they have reached.
Actually SCF is already effectively used in decision making by farmers in Australia for years now. In fact, one of the many reasons ACIAR is funding a project called “Bridging the Gap Between Seasonal Climate Forecasts and Decision Makers in Agriculture” is because the australians wanted to see if SCF will yield the same positive results here (and in other countries) where the climate and the way decisionmakers think (and their ability to accept innovations) are very far from the Australian setting.
this is a quote from the Review of Literature in my thesis, the words are not mine i assure you:
Current data show that use of climate forecasts by farmers translate to benefits. In the northern part of the Australian grain belt, for example, significant increase in profit of up to 20 percent and or reduction in risk of up to 35 percent can be achieved with wheat crops based on SCF available at planting time (Hammer, Holzworth, & Stone, 1996).
Hammer, G.L., Holzworth, D.P. & Stone, R. (1996). The value of skill in seasonal climate forecasting to wheat crop management in a region with high climatic variability. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research, 47, 717-737
Through research, the project leaders of ‘Bridging the Gap’ have also thought of ways to introduce SCF and encourage it’s use to filipino farmers.
To Marlon:
Supervised by my college adviser, I’m currently working on a video that would (hopefully) encourage farmers to use SCF, i could definitely use some assistance if you’re not too busy with your manuscript =)