By Fatima Muraina
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Ondo state farmers have been urged to invest in weather guide forecast rather than sacrificing their farm produce to natural disaster.
The Head of Department , Meteorology and Climatic Science, School of Sciences, Federal University of Technology, FUTA, Prof. Ahmed Balogun gave the charge in an interview with The Hope yesterday in Akure, Ondo state.
Balogun said food production is very vital and should not be toyed with but to fashion ways of attaining sufficiency through weather forecast.
” The state should be able to fund this to guide farmers and since the state claimed there is no fund, farmers should take responsibility on the programme because it is very compulsory to boost production,” he stated.
He urged farmers to form themselves into cooperatives which would enable them pay for the services of weather guide forecast to educate them.
According to him, if there are 1,000 farmers and each of them pays N1,000, it will go a long way in funding the weather guide to encourage climatologists or meteorologist for weather report.
He advised them never to rush to the farm with early rain which often cease.
Also, the Project Manager of Climatology Department of the Ondo State Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Mr Adeshina Rufus Akeju advised farmers to learn to work with the records to know when and what they need at any point in time.
” They should be conservative in what they are doing and be able to work with records with the little they have and with their experience with early rainfall.
While saying that his department is in charge of weather records and not forecast, Akeju said they have Meteorological stations across the 18 local government areas including field officers and overseers who take records and send to the headquarters, but lack necessary fund to perform.
