Can seasonal weather forecasting inform farmers’ investment decisions, helping to improve their wellbeing? Experimental evidence evaluating monsoon onset forecasts in 250 villages in India has shown that forecasts can indeed help farmers tailor their planting decisions to the coming growing season, enabling them to make better choices about the amount of land to cultivate and what to grow. By the end of the growing season, researchers found that farmers were better off, seeing increased food expenditures and net savings, making forecasts a promising tool for climate adaptation.

Going beyond the research findings, how is life for the farmers in these villages? How do they see such research experiments? Are they curious to learn more about how they can make better farming choices using improved forecasts?

EPIC-India’s Vikram Buragohain recently travelled to Veljerla, in the Mahbubnagar District of Telangana, India, one of the 250 villages that was part of this randomized control trial conducted by researchers of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

Through a series of photos, he tried to capture the faces, emotions, and stories of some of these farmers, who, through their participation, made this groundbreaking research possible.

It’s in these paddy fields that farmers toil to earn their money – with their fortunes dependent on the whim of the monsoon. Accurate forecasts can help farmers make decisions that match the weather.

A smile punctuates the face of Shivraj Goud, a farmer, as he recalls how the weather forecast he received helped improve his farming practices.

Farmers in Verjala who are part of the treatment group received SMS-based weather forecast alerts 4-6 weeks before the onset of monsoon, helping them make informed farming choices.

With farming, risks always exist. Standing on his destroyed tomato field from the intense monsoon rains, Suresh Kummari looks up at the sky. He claimed that while the tomato harvest was destroyed, the maize harvest survived. Suresh did not receive the forecast alerts as part of this experiment.

Because the show must go on – a worker cleans up the field for their next harvest.

So, can improving forecasts and making them available to farmers increase the well-being of farmers and boost the economies of farming communities around the world? Emerging research evidence suggests, yes, long-range forecasts indeed can.