Using Indigenous Knowledge to Enhance Rainfall Forecasts Among Smallholder Farmers in Mt. Elgon Region, Eastern Uganda

The frequency and severity of uncertain rainfall and climate extremes are projected to increase across many parts of the world. Access to rainfall forecasting information becomes an essential and critical resource that smallholder farmers should use to take advantage of good rains and avoid its adverse effects. In many smallholder farming communities, the reliability and accuracy of the scientific information is questionable and therefore not adequately used to make informed farming decisions. Amidst this dilemma, smallholder farmers rely heavily on indigenous knowledge to comprehend rainfall patterns in their day-to-day and seasonal farming calendar. A study carried out among smallholder farmers in the Mt. Elgon region indicated that a large proportion of farmers used a wide range of indigenous indicators to predict rainfall patterns. The indicators used by farmers were largely celestial objects and/or animal/plant behaviour to forecast onset and cessation of rains. While this is true, the type of indicators used to forecast the rainfall patterns were site specific, made prediction over a short temporal scale (days to a few weeks) and did not provide adequate information on rainfall amount, intensity and distribution which are key parameters for making evidence-based farming decisions