Managing Vulnerability and Boosting Productivity in Agriculture through Weather Risk Mapping

Productivity in the agricultural sector
is inherently dependent on weather, such as variations in
rainfall and temperature. As a result, weather risk events
can cause losses in yield and production that translate into
economic losses for producers, as well as other sector
stakeholders that depend on income from agricultural trade,
transport, processing, or export. This document is a guide
for development practitioners and strategically presents a
variety of mapping techniques for agricultural risk
management and illustrates the application of these
techniques for informing public and private sector
development strategies. The introduction places weather risk
mapping within the broader context of agricultural risk,
explaining how mapping can enable risk identification,
assessment and management activities, and each chapter
elaborates on one or more of the technical components. A
basic definition of agro-meteorology is provided, along with
a discussion of different mapping techniques. The guide
presents the available remote (satellite) databases of
agro-meteorological variables that can be used for the
purpose of weather risk mapping, assessing the advantages
and drawbacks of each database and their suitability for
different purposes. The document reviews current risk
mapping analyses based on historical weather observations,
which are typically used for risk identification and
assessment, including climatologies, hazard and risk maps,
climate regionalizations and agro-ecological zones (AEZ).
The document also reviews forward-looking mapping
techniques, known as diagnostic and forecasting analyses,
specific examples of which are drawn from the United States,
the European Union, and Australia. Finally, the guide
provides instruction on how and why to conduct
agro-ecological zoning, a technique that can be used to
assess land-use types, land resources, land suitability, and
climatic and agro-climatic regionalizations, as well as to
inform land use recommendations. The concluding chapter
demonstrates a step-by-step application of agro-ecological
zoning in a case study of Mozambique.