A weather information centre opened in Homa Bay

Homa Bay

Friday October 20, 2023

KNA by Sitna Omar

Farmers in Homa Bay are a happy lot after the County Government in partnership with TommorrowNow Organization launched a climate information centre to aid farming activities.

The system will collect and analyze climate data including temperature, rainfall, wind, soil moisture, lake conditions and extreme weather conditions.

It will then disseminate this information to farmers, fishermen and the locals to assist them in decision-making.

The Country Manager, TomorrowNow Mr Ronald Ndiang’a said the organization wanted to empower farmers to make decisions through various agro-weather insights.

Tomorrow Now is a climate-tech non-profit organization providing next-generation weather intelligence and crop insights.

“We partnered with Homa Bay to provide these general weather forecasting and digital climate advisories which this particular centre will be disseminating to different farmers,” he said.

Farmers will now receive information through climate alerts through phone messages and voice notes as well as on smartphones through a platform named Homa Bay Agricultural Observatory Climate.

He noted the centre will help farmers grow in the wake of climate change.

 “This centre is basically supporting them to be at the first lane to be able to adapt to this changing climate as they will be able to uptake the new ways of farming like regenerative or climate-smart agriculture,” he stated.

Governor Gladys Wanga who spoke on Monday after the launch also echoed these sentiments reiterating the information centre will provide information based on the farmers’ location.

“We recently registered a total of 245,000 farmers and we know the location of their farms, what they are growing, whether cotton or soya. We basically know their geolocation,” she said.

The system will provide farmers advisory services and climate alerts, she added.

“Our ancestors would look at the sky and tell whether it would rain or not but because of climate change it's impossible to tell and that is why we are now taking advantage of technology to advise our farmers accordingly,” Wanga said.

Courtesy; KNA