Impacts of Tailored Climate Information Services on Pesticide Usage and Farmers’ Income in Relation to Rice Disease Management in Coastal Bangladesh

Climate change-induced disease occurrences are one of the major factors that affect sustainable rice production across the globe. The adoption and use of tailored climate information services (CIS) through mobile applications can assist farmers by providing actionable information for climate-smart disease management. This study assesses the impacts of using tailored CIS on farmers’ pesticide usage and income benefits and suggests design principles for co-producing the service regarding rice disease forecasts and management in coastal Bangladesh. The experiment followed a participatory approach for co-producing tailored CIS to provide farmers with rice disease forecast and management information for better decision-making. The access, understanding, and use of the DROP app and associated capacity-building training greatly assist farmers in managing diseases in advance. Results show that 77% of the farmers found that using this agrometeorological service helped them improve their understanding of pesticide application, timeliness on when to spray, maintaining pesticide dose, and decreased farmers’ frequency and purchase of pesticides. The majority of them (89%) also mentioned that understanding and uptake of disease forecast, and management information also benefits farmers by minimizing pesticide usage, and cost and thereby increasing crop yields due to on-time application of pesticides with other agricultural activities such as applying fertilizer and irrigation considering weather conditions. Furthermore, this study recommends design principles for co-producing tailored CIS for similar regions across the globe where smallholder farmers face similar issues such as climate-induced disease occurrence and rice yield reduction. The development of CIS to forecast and manage diseases using ICT media required strong collaboration among farmers, agricultural extension officers, meteorologists, plant pathologists, and ICT specialists.  Capacity-building training is crucial for farmers which helps them improve climate knowledge, and ability to apply CIS in decision-making, enabling farmers to follow climate-smart disease management techniques. Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) should come forward to disseminate and adopt the service among other farmers in the country for sustainable rice production and make them more resilient to the changing climate.