D. Rijks, M.W. Baradas Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 103 2000 27–42 29
one wishes to provide effective service, each client must be considered unique in respect of his or her
requirements. The agrometeorologist should know these clients
and their goals: •
Is the clients’ interest in benefits in the economic, social, security, sustainability, environment, leisure,
or other domains? •
Is the client a policy maker, a monitoring agent, or a practising producer, etc.?
• Can the client ‘pay’ individually for the product, or
will remuneration come through a collectivity, e.g. a Chamber of Agriculture, a commodity agency, a
marketing unit, etc.?
2.2. The profile of the client The initial client may be the applied meteorologist
who is acting as a client of the data-management me- teorologist. To facilitate the work of preparing infor-
mation, and to explain its reason and justification to third parties, the product that is desired and that can be
‘marketed’ should be defined clearly. So also should the use that can be made of it, and the benefit that may
arise from its use.
The client may be another section of one’s own meteorological service, asking for an analysis of data.
It may be a government service or a non-government service, an information dissemination unit, such as a
local radio. It may be a farmer or a group of farmers or a farmers organization, a plant or animal health
protection, forestry or livestock service, a fertilizer company or a soil conservation group. Other clients
may be the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Planning, e.g. for the development of sustainable
agriculture, for warnings on alarm situations, bush and forest fires, locust control, for drought allevi-
ation measures, flood control, the planning of the movement of stocks of food or seeds. It may be an
interest in a national Baradas and Sutrisno, 1981 or international crop monitoring activity, such as that
of the FEWS group Famine Early Warning Sys- tem in the US FEWS, 1998, the MARSSAI group
Monitoring Agriculture with Remote SensingSpace Applications Institute of the Joint Research Centre
of the European Union Vossen and Rijks, 1995, an Embassy, a marketing or a post-harvest crop
management service, an entity engaged in the con- servation of the environment, or any other kind of
‘customer’.
2.3. Identification of the client To identify the clients in agricultural, livestock hus-
bandry or forestry activities, it is useful to contact the relevant Ministries, the ‘Chambers of Agriculture’ or
equivalent units, the commodity institutes, or the dis- trict agricultural and lifestock services.
The identification of the client, and of the prod- ucts shehe requires, can be made through a process
of listening to the requirements of persons in other disciplines, and through a dialogue about the issues
or problems in their work, points that could make their work safer, easier, more efficient, more reliable,
etc.
In some cases one finds that the prospective client does not know that agrometeorology has a useful prod-
uct to offer. Talking with herhim about those aspects of the work that are sensitive to meteorology may
make herhim aware of whether shehe could profit from being a customer or not. As a salesperson an
agrometeorologist must know the products, described in the clients’ language, that can be ‘sold’ as if the
client is a commercial customer, who must be satisfied in order to remain a client.
Finally, a meteorological service may ‘discover’ new clients, through a continuing dialogue with repre-
sentatives of different spheres of the agricultural com- munity and through the development of new concepts
in the application of agrometeorology.
3. What does the client require
3.1. Possible products Possible products fall into different groups:
• Basic data;
• Basic data together with an analysis andor an ad-
visory message for specific applications, possibly combined with non-meteorological data, such as
those derived from remote sensing;
• Methods, techniques, software packages for specific
applications.
30 D. Rijks, M.W. Baradas Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 103 2000 27–42
3.2. Basic data Basic data should be presented in an easily inter-
pretable form, the ultimate format and use of which is left to the choice of the client. Apart from the elemen-
tary observations, their sums and totals, it can consist of individual or combined probabilities of various me-
teorological parameters, extreme values, distributions in time or in space, and coincident occurrence of cer-
tain values of different parameters e.g. temperature and humidity.
3.3. Basic data plus further-analyzed products These are basic data accompanied by worked-up
data andor an advisory message that put the basic data into a specific-application-oriented perspective. There
is a great number of such products, some of which are described here:
•
The probability of rainfall for crop water balance calculations to plan the agricultural system and to
assess the possible length of the rainfed cropping season Manning, 1956; Rijks, 1976, and to decide
on agricultural activities or processes for different crops, such as accessibility of the fields, land prepa-
ration, sowing, germination, weeding, thinning, ridging to prevent lodging, supplemental irrigation,
fertilizer application, crop protection measures, ripening, harvesting and post-harvesting operations
such as drying and storage e.g. Traore et al., 1992; Direction Nationale de la Météorologie, 1998.
• Information
for longer-term,
infrastructural, measures like land-layout for erosion control
and soil conservation, intercropping systems, contour-ridging for the conservation and use of
water Rijks, 1977. Similar information is needed for the study of relations in catchment management
and for planning of irrigation system layout and similar studies.
• Information about extreme low or high tempera-
ture regimes and their duration and localization, that affect the development and growth of crops and an-
imals, and in some cases the state of the infrastruc- ture serving agriculture, the frequency of the risk of
occurrence of frost, or of heat stress for crops and livestock.
• Information about solar radiation and sunshine
hours, for the calculation of photosynthesis, crop growth, evapotranspiration, crop drying, and for
applications in the sphere of the agricultural in- frastructure and operations, like the construction
of animal shelters, animal health care or for farm energy generation and conservation.
• Some of these latter activities also can benefit
from better information about humidity and wind regimes. Furthermore, information on humidity is
a major element in the assessment of the risk of occurrence of crop diseases and some crop pests.
Low humidity may inhibit fertilization during flowering.
• Wind regimes may influence lodging, and thus per-
haps the need for ridging, the movement of crop and animal pests and their control. Extreme winds
may cause significant damage to fruit trees Mel- laart et al., 1999. Information on wind regimes is
essential for the construction of windbreaks and the establishment of fire-breaks in bush- and forest-fire
control.
• Particular aspects of the information required in
the livestock industry include the assessment of the potential pasture productivity, of the seasonal
food and water supply and quality, assessment of the risk of overgrazing or of bushfires, hay
making, housing, animal health and productiv- ity, the introduction of highly-productive species
and the drying with solar energy of meat and fish.
• The use of energy, one of the most expensive
recurrent inputs in agriculture, is dependent on me- teorological information, among others, to become
efficient and economically viable.
• The practice of agricultural aviation, for sowing,
fertilizer application and surveying in addition to crop protection, requires agrometeorological in-
formation for the assessment of the needs and the potential benefit of an intervention, as well as for
the application operations.
• Food security programmes require agrometeorolo-
gical inputs to the crop monitoring activities, and livestock services inputs to the modelling of poten-
tial production of natural grazing areas, which in turn may have an effect on transhumance.
Other clients may, in relation to studies of the ef-
fects of climate variability, or in crop monitoring and yield forecasting procedures, need the outlook, the
‘scenarios’ that could occur and their probability,
D. Rijks, M.W. Baradas Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 103 2000 27–42 31
following different agrometeorological or general weather events.
A longstanding client, whose product requirements are constantly evolving, is the agricultural research
community, composed of the staff of regional, national and international institutes. It is one of the communi-
ties in which a significant number of persons are well aware of the benefits of use of agrometeorological
information, and it is a client that can help a national agrometeorological service to promote and expand the
field of application of the product delivered. One of the products used for the application of results of research
is the agro-meteorological characterization of regions FAO, 1978; Rijks, 1994. Some other examples
are: •
Quantitative values maximum, optimum, mini- mum of the relevant parameters for different crops:
a of factors that define maximum production temperature, solar radiation b of factors that may
limit production: the water balance, conditions for nutrient uptake, for weeding, etc c of factors that
reduce production: pests and diseases;
• Quantitative values maximum, optimum, mini-
mum of the relevant parameters of models of development of pests and diseases Franquin and
Rijks, 1983 and of migrant pests Rainey et al., 1990;
• Information on weather factors water balance, tem-
perature and humidity regimes, daylength, etc. that help with the selection of varieties adapted to the
varability of the length of season;
• Parameters dealing with the choice and use of farm
machinery, fertilizer applications, pest and disease management;
• Information to implement measures of microcli-
mate manipulation and modification Stigter, 1988, 1994;
• Information on the probability of certain conditions
of solar radiation, temperature and water availabil- ity for the development of intercropping and mul-
tiple cropping systems, so that natural inputs are exploited optimally;
• Information for planning the feasibility and effi-
ciency of on-farm water storage facilities Baradas and Sutrisno, 1981;
• Information required for planning agroforestry
plantations and for the establishment and manage- ment of windbreaks;
• Conditions for the selection of different forest
species, their establishment, the risk and incidence of forest pests and diseases, information on the risk
and for the forecasting of bush and forest fires and for forest fire management practices;
• Assessment of the solar and wind energy potential.
The major clients in the commercial sector, e.g. the processing of food and fiber, have long since estab-
lished their own structure for obtaining, in the most timely manner, the agrometeorological information re-
quired. Analysis of the methods used in the sugar, co- coa, coffee, banana processing industries, to name but
a few, may enable an agrometeorological service to provide similarly useful information to clients outside
these major production companies. Some other exam- ples are:
•
Climatic, probability and forecast information for the planning of irrigation systems, risks of water
shortages, optimization of the water use efficiency the ratio of yield per unit water, information for
day-to-day scheduling irrigation scheduling models, using real-time data and forecasts e.g. Rijks and
Gbeckor-Kove, 1990; Friesland et al., 1998; Smith, 2000;
• Information to foresee the optimum time for har-
vesting e.g. of vine-grapes, Gerbier and Remois, 1977; Strydom, 1999;
• Information for the improvement of storage
conditions e.g. of groundnuts in Gambia, Rijks, 1987;
• Information of the risk of occurrence of weather
hazards for crops and animals, hail, frost, hot dry winds that may cause sterilization of pollen, floods,
droughts etc;
• Information on meteorological factors that affect the
efficiency of energy inputs into agriculture, whether the energy be of fossil, human, animal, mechani-
cal, thermal, solar electrical or chemical nature, through a choice of optimum timing and amount of
such inputs. As regards the social, economic and legal aspects
of agriculture, clients can be policy making or im- plementing organizations, representatives of develop-
ment banks and agencies, technical cooperation orga- nizations, research groups and institutes, or organiza-
tions dealing with sustainable development, ecosys- tem management and environmental issues, wishing to
consider the use of meteorological information in their
32 D. Rijks, M.W. Baradas Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 103 2000 27–42
decision making processes. Among the subjects that command more and more attention by these clients is
the use of meteorological information to promote the efficiency of the use of water and energy, the reduction
of pollution and the conservation of the environment. Some further examples are:
•
Weather forecasts following food situation assess- ments made with real-time data, to help determine
the food security outlook; •
Information for the monitoring, and possible fore- cast, of floods and droughts and for the alleviation
of their effects; •
Monitoring of desertification, avoidance of over- grazing, salinization, wind- and water-erosion;
• Information for wildlife conservation and manage-
ment. 3.4. Methods, techniques, software packages for
specific applications For clients that wish to operate their own daily in-
formation service, agrometeorological services may be asked to provide tested software packages or parts
thereof, such as those for the calculation of the water balance, for the monitoring and control of some pests
and diseases, or for crop growth monitoring. Another much-demanded product is a reference data bank for
comparing actual data with the mean, with those of the last year or those of any other period.
4. Some products that an agrometeorological service can offer
