Climate-Smart Agriculture: Weather Data for Index Insurance, enhanced efficiency and improved food...

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» - Limited access to credit for the purchase of

- Seeds of good quality,

- Fertilizer,

- Other agrochemicals and inputs

- Limited access to markets to sell crop at adequate pricing

- Limited access to good advisory services

- Weather risks make harvest unpredictable

- But: harvest = security for credit - no secured harvest = no credit !

What are the major problems of small holder farmers?

What‘s needed? Relevant - Accurate - Real-time WEATHER DATA

» Weather data is the key to everything:

- Seeding

- Crop Development

- Pathogen Development (consulting!!)

- Irrigation Management

- Harvesting

- Insurance / Micro-Credit through insurance coverage

WEATHER DATA

» Weather data can help to:

- Reduce pesticide and fungicide application by 50% + more

- Reduce consumption of water and energy for irrigation

- Reduce usage of fertilizer through proper irrigation

- Increase quantity and quality of crop

- Provide neutral data for the assessment of weather risks

WEATHER DATA

» The situation in Africa:

The average African Country operates less

automatic agro-meteorological stations than

the Agricultural University of Vienna (50)

WEATHER DATA

» What do they all have in common?

-They start with a little pilot

-The are chronically underfunded

-There is no long-term plan

-They hardly ever go to scale

-After the project ends they fall apart

WEATHER STATION PROJECTS

» Rural areas are perceived to be risky!

- Damage events occur frequently.

- Damage events frequently hit many farmers in large areas.

- Historic data is often missing.

- Adequate risk assessment is difficult

- Marketing in sparsely populated areas is expensive and difficult

- Individual damage assessment is expensive.

-Insurance is thus only available to large scale, high value farming operations

Why is getting insurance difficult?

» What is Index Insurance?

-The concept dates back to the late 1940ies (Halcrow)

-Index Insurance uses indices correlated to events influencing yield, such as

- Precipitation, drought, flood, hail, hurricanes

-Events need to be monitored regionally, e.g. by a weather station

-Events within a monitored area lead to payouts, even without individual damage assessment

-Verifiable monitoring allows reinsurance, thus dispersal of risk.

Weather Index Insurance

» - Development of proper indices that correlate well with agricultural loss is very difficult.

- Development of proper premiums and payout levels is as difficult: what‘s the right correlation between premium, payout and actual loss?

- What shall be insured? Inputs? Outputs? Both?

- How can the index be established? • Historic meteorological records are needed (~20 years)• Historic satellite images allow some approximation

- How can the index be verified?• Local weather stations in a dense network are needed• How to correlate remote data (satellite images) with ground events?

The difficulties of Index Insurance

Kilimo Salama, Kenya (SFSA)

HARITA, Ethiopia (WFP)

Senegal (WFP)

Ghana (GIZ)

Zimbabwe (EcoFARMER)

Weather Index Insurance in Africa

Joint project of INIFAP / SAGARPA, and COFUPRO, the Growers Organization

Network size: > 1.000 Adcon ETo stations > 300 Adcon soil moisture stations

Website: http://clima.inifap.gob.mx – all data online free of charge!

Purpose: yield prediction, disease advice, irrigation optimization

Index Insurance: since 2009 250 stations are also used for index insurance

Weather Index Insurance in Mexico

»» REFERENCES – The Who is Who of Adcon Users

» WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

Develop a plan for the whole country

Go to scale right away

Think long term – think 15 to 20 years

Provide adequate funding for the long term

Think multi-purpose: - index insurance & micro-finance- disease and irrigation consulting- traceability for international markets- Share data with other interested parties

ACTION PLAN

- Name a project CHAMPION

- Build a solid IT environment

- Build a solid weather station network

- Train technical staff on operation & maintenance

- Provide agronomical training to extension officers

- Distribute as much information to as many people

as possible!

ACTION PLAN

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!

Climate-Smart Agriculture: Weather Data for Index Insurance, enhanced efficiency and improved food...

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