LA TRINIDAD, BENGUET—Providing the country’s farmers with access to mobile phones would play a critical role in the government’s bid to come up with a local data bank on climate change, a National Anti-Poverty Commission consultant said.

“The farmers are in the best position to notice and report changes in climate patterns and production cycles,” said Dr. Rogelio Concepcion, who spoke before the International Society for Southeast Asian Agricultural Sciences convention at the Benguet State University here on Friday.

Concepcion said the farmers’ field experience in agriculture would cure the gap between global information and indicators of climate change in local farming villages and indigenous communities.

This is what is known as localization or visualization of climate change indicators, he said.

“Our science communities have regularly received information on globally defined climate risks but are unable to localize the information for sheer lack of technical facilities and weather measuring devices,” he said.

The country, he said, is unprepared to support agrometereology or the study of the relationship of weather patterns and agriculture.

Concepcion, who is also in charge of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “Water for Waterless Municipalities” program, said the absence of technical facilities for agrometeorology made local scientists unprepared to help farming communities vulnerable to climate change hazards.

“The situation required the establishment of rain gauges and climatic stations in key production areas and ecosystems to develop a climate database for the monitoring and evaluation of climate change risks in the country,” he said.

Concepcion said the dearth on local information makes farmers the best option to generate data on climate change indicators in the fields.

Through their mobile phones, he said, farmers could tip weather scientists on climate change indicators in their areas, such as on disturbances on fruit trees and vegetable production, periodic rains and drizzles, resurgence of pests and diseases, decline in soil fertility and the growth of weeds.

Local scientists could now process the information into a data bank that would help in formulating localized policies and programs for climate change.

Giving farmers cellular phones would be important in the country’s preparation for a weather-based road map for food security, said Concepcion. Delmar Cariño, Inquirer Northern Luzon