By Murimi Gitari
Karamoja, a semi-arid area in Northern Uganda, is inhabited mainly by agropastoralist and pastoralist communities. It experiences frequent droughts and unpredictable weather, which hinders crop and production. People living in the areas of the cattle corridor, including Nakasongola and parts of Teso, have been hit hardest due to lack of water and pasture for their livestock. To address the problem, FAO has been implementing a project on early warning system to enable farmers and pastoralists to predict the weather patterns using indigenous knowledge and modern technologies.
Under the project, a group of people have been trained on how to collect data from selected homesteads about the weather patterns and disseminate the information within their communities. The project team leader Thomas Oyugi said that the data collectors who are mainly church parish officials are given questionnaires to gather the information both manually and electronically on mobile phones. This information is then sent to the district contact person who liaises with the meteorological department in Kampala for analysis.
The weather forecast is communicated back to farmers using community radios, drama actors and posters that are designed in the local language. Since Karamoja has one planting season, farmers begin tilling their land around March and plant between May and June with the onset of the rainy season. Richard Ayella, one of the data collectors in Katanga village Niatakwae parish in Moroti District noted that his team was tasked with giving weather information to the farming communities using simple phones.
The meteorological department in Kampala sends the weather forecast information to the phones of data collectors who in turn alert farmers through messages to parish officials.
The weather information is also disseminated through radio programmes produced by community radio stations in the region. The programmes also advise farmers on the crop varieties to plant in a particular season, the best agronomy practices to adopt, grazing and pasture management, and market prices for farm produce and animals. Youth in the Kobebe drama group, which is supported by the project, move around the region staging plays that educate communities on weather, food security, drought, the right season to plant crops, and the need to avoid selling food and wasting the money on alcohol. Moroto district records officer Joseph Onyang, who is the focal person of the project, said the role of the administrative unit is to engage the department of meteorology in Kampala by providing them with data collected. The data is analysed by the meteorology team in Kampala and the information is sent back to the district, which is then translated into the local language for the communities.
The pastoral and agro-pastoral Karamojong communities also have their traditional methods of forecasting weather. They rely on various indicators such as plant phenology (how plants change seasonally), animal behaviour, the position and movement of stars, the position of the sun and wind direction to predict weather.
For instance, they can forecast a bumper harvest by studying the behaviour of the fig tree. In addition, persons believed to have supernatural powers can foretell the future from dreams, while others can read the intestines of animals and shoes and speak to the gourd to tell future climatic conditions or other misfortunes or fortunes.
They also predict conflicts, pest and disease, and insecurity leading to cattle raids, among others. Such special cultural expertise is only passed down the generations in particular families or clans. The district and the development partners are trying to harmonise the traditional methods of forecasting weather with the modern ones.
Ms Gloria Ato, a beneficiary of the project, said that use of the weather forecast information has enabled her to increase yields of sorghum and cow pea on her farm. Previously she would harvest two bags of sorghum grain from one acre but now her yield has increased to eight bags. Dr Scovia Adikini, the head of cereals at the National Agricultural Semi-Arid Resources Research Institute (NaSARRI), said that her team has organised farmers in the region in groups and provided them with droughttolerant crop varieties.
They include Narobean1 and 6, drought tolerant high yielding finger millet Nraomil2 and 5 Sorghum Narosorg1, 2, Seso3 and green gram Narogram2. The distribution of these seeds resulted in good harvests especially in districts of Abim, Kotido, Kabong and Napak.