Ignitia - Preventative Weather Forecasting
By having access to weather forecasting services, farmers will have valuable information that currently is not available at all in West Africa. With the aid of this meteorological information, important decisions regarding use of limited resources such as water, fertilizers and pesticides, can be made by farmers. This will have an immediate impact on farm productivity, income and also the wider economy and the environment.
The weather forecasting service for small farmers was released on the 1st of June 2013, and Ignitia are now sending out weather forecasts on a daily basis.The business model is to sell weather forecasts to large companies in seed production, fertilizer, farming equipment and trading in important sectors in Ghana such as cocoa. These companies have already organised farmer associations composed of a large number of farmers. The forecasts are sold for a yearly fee to these companies, and they distribute it to the farmers in their associations by means of text messages using the existing 2G and 3G network and the GPS-coordinates of the individual farmer. In this way the weather information will reach those who need it the most at a negligible cost to them. The driver behind this project is to commercialise the use of the most advanced satellite and radar information and by complex modelling create a weather forecast in West Africa.
Farmers use forecasts to better plan when to plant, apply fertilizer, spray pesticide, harvest, etc. They see up to 80% increase in income, due to decreased risk and loss.