Farmers using weather information improve their yield by 35 percent - NiMet

The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has said evidence has shown that farmers who use its weather forecasts information to plan their farming activities gets improved yield of up to 35 percent.

The Director-General NiMet, Pof. Sani Mashi stated this yesterday at the opening of the two-day stakeholders workshop on climate and weather information services in Nigeria.

The workshop has the theme “how to support users’ understanding and use of weather forecast services in Nigeria.” It was organised by NiMet in collaboration with University of Leeds’ Global Challenges Research Fund African Science for Weather Information and Forecasting (GDRF-African-SWIFT) Programme. Other partners include; the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), and Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMet).

The NiMet DG who was represented by Mr Reuben Jigah, the Director of Finance and Account, NiMet also expressed NiMet’s readiness to provide timely, accurate and reliable weather information, to end users in various sectors of Nigerian economy.

“Empirical evidence shows that the proper application of agrometeorological information to farming is capable of increasing crop yield by up to 35 percent” he said adding that “available rainfall data from the NiMet Synoptic stations clearly indicate that there have been great fluctuations in rainfall received in the different parts of the country since the beginning of this century.”

“The Nigerian Meteorological Agency is committed to providing timely, accurate and reliable weather and climate information, in order to guide policy and decision making” he said.

He also said NiMet’s weather and climate information helped to reduce losses, arising from extreme weather condition, especially in agricultural sector.