EDITORIAL: Met should be precise, farmers can't afford guesswork

The start of the long rains is a time of the year that farmers wait for with anxiety because timing is everything in their success or failure.

In the past week, the weatherman has put out forecasts that have both reassured and triggered uncertainty.

Last week, the message was clear – the current February rains pounding large swathes of the country will be short-lived, and farmers and their supply chains should not rush to plant because a looming dry patch would starve their crops of moisture.

But before that advice could sink, a second advisory arrived in which farmers were told there would be no interruption and that planting in February rather than mid-March is the practical action to take.

The farming process, whatever the crop, is an undertaking that requires precise timing and guesswork is the surest path to financial losses and the resultant food insecurity, which creates food price inflation that affects the entire economy.

We appeal to the Met Office to communicate with clarity and authority.

The dangers of foggy messages have such far-reaching socioeconomic consequences and must be avoided in the age of better weather science and state-of-the art computing capacity that must only make predictions as near accurate as possible.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Quote of the day: “To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.” —French author Victor Hugo (‘Hunchback of Notre Dame’, ‘Les Misérables’) was born on February 26, 1802