Disseminating weather forecasts to farmers to promote climate adaptation

Multiple randomized evaluations find that when farmers receive weather forecasts or weather-informed agricultural advisories, they adjust their agricultural decisions like area under cultivation, sowing or harvest dates, and timing or quantity of inputs. This would in turn increase farmers' welfare. Many of these studies are from India, including one from Odisha. Odisha’s agriculture department would like to disseminate weather forecasts to the 8.7 million farmers across the state enrolled in their digital agriculture extension system. The system sends information through phone calls customized to farmers’ locations. Many short range forecasts are publicly available online, but interviews with farmers suggest limited access. The researchers will support the scale up of dissemination of short-range forecasts of rainfall, temperature, and/or humidity. They will also embed experiments to answer questions such as: How do impacts vary when farmers receive only forecasts or forecasts with agricultural advice. The researchers study how farmers’ beliefs about the weather and trust evolves in time. The research team will work with local agronomists and climate scientists and conduct phone surveys with farmers, and use call-center and remotely-sensed data to estimate message comprehension and utility. Findings may inform framing and content of weather forecast messages in dissemination scale-ups by the Indian government (through their partnership with agriculture ministry) and other country governments (through Asian Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank partnerships).