New study shows that late rainfall affects cereal yields in Ethiopia
Mosisa Wakjira, a Doctoral Student funded by the E4D Programme in the HYDROL group, is showing in a new paper that changes in the arrival of the rainy season in Ethiopia are significantly impacting cereal yields under rainfed agriculture.
This research uses global daily rainfall data (CHIRPS) and cereal (e.g. maize, teff, sorghum, wheat) yield data over the period 1995-2010 to show the vulnerability of rainfed farming in Ethiopia. Mosisa Wakjira and colleagues mapped several rainfall season characteristics over rainfed agricultural areas and correlated de-trended total cereal production during the Meher long rainy season with the anomalies in those characteristics to quantify the vulnerabilities. The results ultimately show that cereal crop production does depend on rainfall arrival, with an estimate that late onset and shorter rainy season lead to ∼1.5% and 1.1% crop production losses per pentad (5-day period), which can be a significant amount for farmers who rely on rain for their livelihood.
Wakjira, M., Peleg, N., Anghileri, D., Molnar, D., Alamirew, T., Six, J., and Molnar, P. (2021), Rainfall seasonality and timing: implications for cereal crop production in Ethiopia, Agric. For. Meteorol., 310, 108633, external page https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108633.