Climate Modeling in Colombia

The Clima y Sector Agropecuario Colombiano (Colombian Climate and Agricultural Sector; CSAC) partnership combined climate models predicting local weather patterns with agricultural data on the climatic conditions in which specific rice varieties do best. The partnership provides information to growers and helps them improve their decision making about when to plant or not plant, as well as which varieties are most likely to have the best yields in the forecasted conditions. The site-specific information had an enormous economic impact. In 2013, when CSAC predicted a high risk of crop loss due to drought, farmers who did not plant saved $3.6 million in agricultural inputs that would have been spent on the failed crop.