Making weather information services usable to support adaptive decision-making in farming in Ghana

Interconnecting socio-environmental factors present a challenge for the availability of water for farming in developing country contexts such as Ghana. For instance, climate change and climate variability create uncertain weather conditions, with records of early or late rainfall onset, early cessation, lengthy dry spells in between the farming seasons, and too much or too little rainfall. As a result of this variability in weather conditions, farmers are unable to predict the rainfall as they used to. Furthermore, the unavailability of freshwater and irrigation facilities creates situations where seasonal rainfed farming is indispensable, given the need to intensify food crop production for export and urban markets. Dependence on the variable weather for water to support seasonal food crop production has accentuated the role of weather information in guiding farmers’ decision- making concerning when to plough, when to sow seeds, the type of crop and variety of seed to select, when to apply agrochemicals, and when to harvest. This situation is not, however, currently reflected in actual practice, as farmers generally do not apply weather information in farming, because of the lack of accurate, location-specific forecasts, untimely delivery of information, and poor communication of information, among several other challenges. Thus, under uncertain weather conditions, farmers rely mostly on their local knowledge and experience to support their decision-making. Several attempts have been made to enhance the usability of weather information for farming; yet, this has not been successful because information providers or scientist play dominant roles in trying to deal with the challenge without involving farmers throughout the entire process. To make weather information usable for farming, there has been a call to shift from the provision of weather and climate information services that are solely science-driven to services that are user-driven through collaboration between scientists, information providers, and users to co- produce information. This thesis is situated within this notion and it seeks to answer the question: What makes weather information services usable for adaptive decision-making in farming within an informational governance context?To provide answers to the research question, I engaged farmers and information providers in an empirical study in the Ada East District, Ghana. I used a multi-method research approach, comprising interviews, observations, focus group discussions, workshops, and the principle of citizen science participatory environmental monitoring for data collection.I introduced the hybrid informational governance framework based on the integration of ideas from three theories, that is, informational governance, hybrid governance, and hybrid organisation. In the framework, I distinguished forms of hybrid governance: multiplicity, intertwinement, and coalescence. The provision of weather information through multiplicity means that different information providers deliver a variety of weather information systems (WIS) for farming. The provision of weather information through intertwinement means that some organisations have evolved towards joint delivery of WIS by using a combination of technologies including radio, mobile telephony, SMS, call centres, and interactive voice response. Furthermore, information and communication technology (ICT) has played a role in coalescence in WIS provision by creating hybrid organisations that combine key characteristics from the different organisational sectors. In the hybrid informational governance context, I found that farmers apply flexible adaptive decision- making strategies such as switching dates for sowing seeds through a wait-and-see or delay strategy, muddling through the farming season with the application of various options, and alternative irrigation strategies. Robust adaptive decision-making strategies are applied to deal with uncertain weather conditions include the portfolio strategy of transplanting seedlings in batches, selection of robust (hardy) crops, and intercropping or diversification. The findings indicate that some flexible or robust strategies could have been enhanced with the application of usable weather information.However, in the study district, various factors affected the usability of WIS for farming. These factors included the origin of the information, information providers’ level of interaction with farmers, continuity in the delivery of information, respect for local values, accessible level and mode of payment, among other factors. Most of all, no single type of weather information identified could on its own provide a reliable forecast. Therefore, farmers complemented their local knowledge and observations with forecasts from various sources. On the basis of these findings, I proposed co-production of weather information where farmers’ local weather forecasts could be integrated with scientific forecasts. This led to the development of an experiment on the co- production of weather forecasts in the Ada East District, Ghana. The experiment involved a user- driven design and the testing of ICT-based digital (smartphones and apps) and rainfall monitoring tools with 22 farmers who collected data on their local indicators, predictions on whether or not there would be rainfall, and records of the actual rainfall. I derived positive responses based on the level of engagement, increase in usability of the tools and understanding of forecast uncertainty, the dissemination of the information to other farmers, and the improvement in daily farming decision-making. Furthermore, I found that farmers’ motivation to engage in the research differed at various periods of the research. Overall, the need to contribute to WIS production, generation of feedback, learning, and ease of data collection were the most important motivational factors.Using findings from various phases of the thesis study, I identified five interconnecting contexts that answer the main research question. These include the need for considerations to be made for the farmer decision-making context, the farmer information context, the WIS provision context, the informational governance context, and overall weather information service design.In this context, this thesis makes theoretical contributions such as the introduction of hybrid informational governance, adaptive decision-making, and WIS usability criteria for farming. It also provides action-oriented knowledge on the design principles required to co-design and co-produce weather information, and enhance participants’ motivations to engage with the citizen science method to support food production and the sustainability of food systems. 

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Sarku, Rebecca
Other Authors:	Dewulf, A.
Format:	Doctoral thesis biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Wageningen University
Subjects:	Life Science,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/making-weather-information-services-usable-to-support-adaptive-de
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