The DROP app: a soil moisture enabled climate information service tailored to smallholder farmerseeds

Abstract

Weather and Climate Information Services (WCIS) for agriculture provide weatherand climate forecasts on various timescales, but soil moisture information that is crucial for plantgrowth and optimizing the agricultural yield is still missing. We, therefore, have developed DROPapp, a WCIS with a soil moisture module. This app was designed with and for smallholder farmersworking on rainfed agriculture in northern Ghana and has three main features: 1) information onlocation-specific scientific weather forecasts (SF), 2) local weather forecasts (LF) from smallholderfarmers, and 3) the soil moisture forecasts. The forecasts generate a high probability of raindetection (POD), with a minimum value of 0.7 obtained from LF. The hybrid forecast (HF) thatintegrates the SF and LF yields the highest POD value of 0.9. However, the hybrid system alsohas a high number of false alarms which results in an overall lower forecast performance of HFcompared to SF. More than half of the farmers (58%) perceived that soil moisture forecasts havegood performance. After the implementation of the app, farmers involved in the study were mostlysatisfied with the use and the features of the app. By using the app, they were able to adjust theirfarming activities, such as sowing, planting and weeding dates, fertilizer and herbicide application,and harvesting. Although some limitations exist, the DROP app has potential to be used worldwidein order to deliver actionable knowledge on WCIS for climate-smart farm decision-making.