It’s a warm, sunny day in Miu, a rural village in south-central Kenya. And 31-year-old Stephen Nzioka works at home on his farm with corn, beans and oranges. He whistles as he digs and clears brush.

“I really like working with my hands,” he says through an interpreter. “It also helps me exercise my body.”

Nzioka comes from a long line of farmers. “Generations back in time, they were all involved in farming,” he says. “There was no other option.”

Nzioka started learning to farm when he was seven. His parents made a small hole and he threw some seeds into it. “That’s how they got me involved,” he says.

For years he applied the lessons of his ancestors to his fields. He planted in the fall, during the rainy season, and harvested a few months later, at the beginning of the dry season. But over the past five or six years, weather patterns have changed, largely due to a changing climate. Nzioka didn’t know when it would rain.

“I (would) plant my produce,” he says, “and then the rain doesn’t come as expected. And so the yield becomes low, and that becomes quite difficult since I invested in plants.”

If a farmer like Nzioka has a failed harvest, it can mean a whole year’s loss of income.

“I planned blindly, so I kept guessing and taking risks,” he says.

Like millions of other farmers in Kenya, Nzioka doesn’t have a smartphone, so he can’t simply look up a five-day forecast. And even if he did have one, the internet connection in most remote, rural areas is too spotty to make much of a difference. But he does have a simple mobile phone with which he can call and text. And more than a year ago, Nzioka’s fate changed:

His phone starts ringing. He just received a message, the kind of message he now receives every week.

“It explains that rain or sun is expected between this time and this time tomorrow,” Nzioka said. Based on the forecast, the message also suggests whether to look for potential pests, whether to irrigate or not, or to fertilize or not. “And that helps me make a choice whether or not to plant.”

Weather intelligence

The weather information in these texts comes from a non-profit organization called Tomorrow now. “The way it works is we get raw weather data from different sources,” said Kenneth Chepkwony, a regional program coordinator with the group.

That information is a mix of satellite data and weather stations on the ground. It’s also super local – think of the landscape laid out in squares of two and a half miles on a side, each with its own prediction.

This high-resolution data drives increasingly accurate forecast and weather models provided by the company Tomorrow.io (of which Tomorrow Now is an independent offshoot). This “ensures that farmers can access information that is relevant to their business and not to the entire city,” says Chepkwony.

The data itself is just information. The goal is to turn it into weather information — something farmers can actually use to “improve their day-to-day decision-making on the farm,” says Campbell Flatter, co-founder and executive director of Tomorrow Now. And that is the job of their government partner, the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO).

“We look at the weather information to predict the short-term forecasts for the farmers,” says Salim Kinyimu, director at KALRO. “And then we can come up with a planting date. We really try to make these messages as simple as possible.”

Later, the messages will suggest when to plant, where to grow which crops, and which varieties of those crops will do best. Nearly five million farmers in Kenya already receive weather advisories. Tomorrow Now says it sees an average turnover increase of 7%.

The challenges of a changing climate

Farmers in Kenya and beyond are struggling with changing weather conditions and seasons.

“Climate change is damaging our livelihoods, especially considering that agriculture is the backbone of Kenyan society,” said Chepkwony, who grew up west of Nairobi. “It threatens entire economic systems.” His father was a farmer until unpredictable weather caused him to lose entire crops. “Honestly,” Chepkwony says, “I miss seeing him as a farmer because that was a time when I felt he was very fulfilled.”

“There is a huge disparity around the world when it comes to weather forecasting,” says Campbell Flatter. “There are about 3 billion people who are effectively blind to local weather forecasts.”

This is the gap that Tomorrow Now hopes to fill.

“I think they are doing a commendable job, but of course, like any technology, there will always be room for improvement,” said Michael Murigi, a Nairobi-based farmer and founder of Concentrate wiselya group that promotes drought-tolerant crop varieties and agricultural practices.

“Distributing weather reports in itself may not be very useful,” he says, “especially when it comes to small farmers who have little information and live in remote villages.” Murigi suggests they may need more support from, for example, a local agricultural advisor, to help them interpret the text messages they receive and find the best way to act on them.

A more reliable future

Stephen Nzioka, the farmer, says his crop yield has improved since he started the program. “So I would say the messages have been quite helpful,” he says.

That certainty could make agriculture a more attractive and reliable option for the millions of people living in poverty across the country. “Agriculture in Kenya,” says Kinyimu, “is the main pillar that the government is using as a tool to improve food security and eradicate malnutrition.”

Tomorrow Now hopes to reach 100 million smallholder farmers by the end of the decade. They plan to expand their efforts to Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and elsewhere.

Successful agriculture can also act as a springboard for families and communities to invest in future generations. “If you can grow enough to not only feed your family but also to sell at the market,” says Campbell Flatter, “you have money to invest back into your farm, you can rent more land, you can grow more crops grow and it actually helps farmers get out of poverty.”

Nzioka is a good example. He has been able to use some of his more reliable income to pay for his daughters’ primary school education. “The products I sell in the market help them achieve higher levels of education,” he says.

It is a long-term investment in his children’s future – an investment made possible by knowing the weather of the next few days.

Copyright 2024 NPR