THE SMALL EARTH NEPAL

The village level consultation workshop on “Customization of weather information and climate services to smallholder farmers” was organized on June 19, 2018, at Puranchaur, Kaski which is also the working site of the project. This program is a part of the project “Customization of weather information and climate services to smallholder farmers – a pilot project at Seti watershed in Kaski” supported by USAID Hariyo Ban Program. The objective of the workshop was to get farmer’s inputs and feedback on how to customize weather parameters for agriculture and dissemination mechanism of the weather forecast in a user-friendly language. The program was hosted by College of Natural Resource Management, Puranchaur, Kaski and a total of 25 local farmers attended the workshop.

Dr. Madan Lall Shrestha, Principle researcher of the project, who is also an academician of Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and advisor of the Small Earth Nepal (SEN), mentioned that the project has proposed to provide automated SMS about the 3 days forecast to 25 farmers and also emphasized that a weather information board will be installed in a  public place, so that farmers can utilize that information as per their necessity. As a quest to make disseminated weather information more robust, an extensive discussion session was conducted among researcher and the local farmers. The importance of weather information on routine farming practices, past experiences with the weather forecast and ease of information dissemination methods were the main highlights of the discussion. The discussion really helped to aggrandize the knowledge on the pertinent matter.

After discussion, farmers opined about the need of forecasts regarding the intensity of rainfall, humidity, cloud cover, wind direction, and speed. Although they accentuated the need of prognosis on hailstorm, weather expert Dr. Shrestha avowed that it will be not possible to predict the occurrence of hailstorm for 3 days at Purachachaur currently.

Mr. Dhiraj Pradhananga, President of SEN, Prof. P.K. Jha, Academician, NAST, Dr Kalika Bahadur Adhikari, Principal of College of Natural Resource Management, Puranchaur, Mr. Piyush Dahal, Research Coordinator, SEN and Mr. Nammy Hang Kirat, Senior Research Associate, SEN also attended and conversed with farmers in the workshop and made themselves familiar with the current scenario of the project site.

Similarly, district-level consultation workshop was organized on June 20, 2018, at Goodwill Hotel, Lakeside, Pokhara. The main agenda of the workshop was to get feedback and suggestions regarding the project from experts from various governmental and non-governmental organizations working in that area. The representatives from different governmental and non-governmental organization likes Western Regional Climate Office of Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Pokhara, Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Co-operative, Province-4,  Regional Agricultural Research Station (RARS), Lumle, Regional Directorate of Livestock Services, Kaski Regional Agriculture Directorate, Kaski, Regional Agricultural Training Center, Pokhara, Regional Soil Testing Laboratory, Kaski, District Forest Office, Kaski, District Soil Conservation Office, Kaski experts from NGOs/INGOs like Nucleus for Empowerment through Skill Transfer (NEST), Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP-NTNC), Hariyo Ban Karyakram, CARE Nepal,  Federation of Community Forestry User Group, Kaski IDE Nepal and media persons were present at the workshop.

The technical session was chaired by Mr. Rajaram Dhakal, Chief of Western Regional Climate Office, DHM, Pokhara. Dr. Madan Lall Shrestha started off the program with welcome remarks and a keynote speech. Dr. Shrestha elucidated on the overall weather forecasting system of Nepal. Following that, Mr. Dhiraj Pradhananga, President of SEN briefed about the project, current status, and limitations of the project and shed light upon the need of customization of weather and climate services for making useful information usable. He shared the agro-advisory bulletin released by NARC in coordination with DHM. Mr.  Sandip Timilsina, from RARS, Lumle presented on climate change and its effect on agriculture. Finally, Mr. Piyush Dahal, Research Coordinator, SEN acquainted the audience with the experiences and proposed methods for customization and dissemination of weather forecast data. As a part of the program, he raised three key questions to make the proposed methods sturdier through a group discussion.

The group discussion in the form of Weather Cafe was moderated by Professor Pramod Kumar Jha, Academician of NAST. Twenty-eight participants, divided into 3 groups, discussed and suggested their views and remarks about customization of weather and climate information to farmers.

Photographs from the program