Agrometeorological aspects of agriculture in the sub-humid and humid zones of Africa and Asia

Entire sub-Saharan Africa and pockets of Asian population is at risk of starvation. The problems and possibilities are however quite different amongst the two regions. Africa with its less than 8% of land irrigated, 3% or more population growth rate, continues to practice only rudimentary, nonscientific form of agriculture. In Asia where input use is high, farmers are approaching economically optimum yield levels, making it difficult to sustain the same rate of yield gains. While efforts to improve long-term productivity on small scale farm must be accelerated, more emphasis must also be placed on research that will help farmers and governments better cope with expected increases in risks resulting from climatic fluctuations, use of limited water resources, poor market integration and other problems. Finally we believe that all appropriate scientific tools including advanced weather forecasting, information technologies such as models, decisions tools should be mobilized to help solve the problems facing small-scale farmers in developing countries. Due to lack of financial support, the network of meteorological stations do not adequately cover various agrometeorological zones to meet user needs. The general lack of confidence in the reliability of weather forecasts has caused farmers not trust and use the weather forecasts. Training opportunities for meteorological services staff in the use of modern tools like computer simulation modeling, remote sensing, geographic information systems as well as electronic instrumentation is needed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.