Weather information services to support agriculture financing-NIRSAL

By Nduka Chiejina (Assistant Editor)

Nigeria is set to have its agro-meteorological weather information services.

This is to support finance and investment decisions in agriculture.

When operational, Nigeria will be able to utilize meteorological data amongst other big data sets in support of increasing yield and productivity of farmers and avoidance of catastrophic weather risk events.

Managing Director of the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed, disclosed these in Abuja when NIRSAL entered into an agreement with the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet).

According to Abdulhameed, “under this partnership, NIRSAL will pursue strategies to inform farmers of the Seasonal Rainfall Prediction (SRP) components like temperature, onset of rainfall and dry spells, cessation of rainfall, etc.”

On how it’s going to benefit farmers the NIRSAL MD said: “This critical information helps farmers optimize their yields, ensure that they don’t go into a catastrophic disastrous outcome so that it perpetrates the poverty circle.”

He noted: “It will be an awareness campaign that will guide farmers against Pre-Onset Rainfall (false-onset) and recommend risk measures in places that will experience severe dry spells, like Bauchi, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi, Borno and Yobe.”

In addition, the partnership between NIRSAL and NiMet he said “will go further to pursuing the development of crop-specific calendars for NIRSAL’s focus commodities to provide precise information on planting, maintenance and harvesting leveraging NiMet data.”

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The collaboration, he said, will bring together the science of data especially related to climate and the science of risk management when it comes to agriculture “and we hope that this combination will give tools and techniques that will help us convince banks and financiers to help them in our decision on when to release money, when to watch out for money and when to watch out for harvesting.”

The NIRSAL boss lamented that Nigeria was wasting fresh water by allowing flood waters to recede to the large body of water they came from.

According to him: “If it does flood in an area does that not give us an opportunity for soil that is available for intensive dry season farming?

“Turn the disaster positively. Who says flood waters that come in from West Africa through River Niger and the Cameroonian mountains must just drain all the way to the sea.”

Professor Sani Abubakar Mashi, Director General/CEO of NiMet  said “the devastation accompanying extreme weather events has mainly impacted on Agriculture, water resources, environment among other sectors.”

This, he noted, “has raised concerns in the heart of many because any threat to agriculture and environment is a threat to food and nutrition security and life in general.”