KENYA
Four million of Kenya’s population depend on tea for their living. It’s a marginal existence. The average smallholder farm is just 1.04 acres and generates an annual net income of $1.075. (USAID figures, June 2017)
One of the biggest threats they face is from crop losses of $200 a year that are the direct result of recurrent, localized, and unpredictable frosts. In 2012, 30% of the entire crop was lost in Nandi. If farmers could get a 72-hour advanced warning of frost in their area – its occurrence may vary across a few kilometers of terrain – they would cut the loss by $80: a month’s income or the annual school tuition or one of their children.
They can now do exactly that with exactly those results. Since 2015, USAID and NASA have offered free public data through their SERVIR program: satellite geospatial data delivery, remote sensoring to monitor ground temperature and other conditions, and three-day forecasts transmitted to farmers via mobile phone maps displays. This permits growers to harvest early and change their rotation for picking young leaves.
SERVIR is being deployed across the globe, for flood forecasting in Bangladesh to forest fire monitoring in Guatemala. It’s likely, if NASA funding continues, to become the small farmers’ GPS. It’s free, accessible, and unique. There is no other way that Kenya’s smallholders could escape the frost risk.