Designing and selecting early warning strategies and increasing their efficiencies: Multiple cropping

Abstract

When designing early warning strategies, one has to understand the climate, the agriculture and the social or livelihoods aspects of the area. Therefore one must have a good idea of what climate/weather information, products and services are available, so that their applications can be further developed and utilized in the early warning service. Then the current status of the stakeholders or community and their agricultural production systems should also be well understood, so that one can identify the opportunities. This can be done using the livelihood profiles and livelihoods baselines (see for example www.fews.net) and a range of options - including farming system options - available to the people, whether at a household, a community or a national/regional level. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.