And from politics to weather forecasting...
The Resilient Rural Belize Programme is financing the upgrade of the Climate Information system at the National Meteorological Service. It's being done with the help of new technologies and equipment that will provide real time weather information to rural farmers across the country. Here are the highlights from today's handing over ceremony. Jomarie Lanza reports.
The Resilient Rural Belize Programme has partnered with the National Met Service to further develop Belize's AgroMet industry. Through the Ministry of Economic Development, they handed over Weather Sensors and Equipment to the National Meteorological Service today in order to develop a system that will be easily accessible to farmers who rely on weather information for their crops' survival. The Acting CEO in the ministry of Economic Development further explained.
Carlos Pol, Acting CEO, Economic Development
"This project was put together with the objective of addressing food security, addressing the needs of the rural areas, especially the farmers because we know the percentage of the informal sector of farmers and how much they contribute to the economy. So in that thinking, the government decided to put together a project that will help us with that security and addressing the farmers' needs, addressing the needs of farmers to be able to remove their products from their location to the market. So this project encompasses that: the rehabilitation of road assistance of farmers for them to protect their products, provide them with refrigerators and other outputs that would be able for them to store their products because we have seen how much the farmers have lost in products. There is a lot of losses when they don't have the proper equipment or the proper tools for them to build or products and move it to the market for it to be sold. Also, this specific project that we are doing today, is providing equipment for data this is more data driven for the meteorological system so that they can be able to inform Farmer when there is a risk or hazard so farmers are better prepared to say you know what a storm is coming I need to know what to do with my farms, I need to know what to do with my products and I need to do exactly what I have to do to avoid any losses."
The handing over today focused on stage three of the project which is to: "Upgrade and Support the Growth of Observational Network". This is being done by upgrading 18 meteorological stations to fully automatic agrometeorological status. The Chief Met shared more details.
Ronald Gordon, Chief Met Officer
"We have a network of over 18 weather stations, but these are targeted to certain specific communities under the RRB project. So what it will do it will enhance the capability of these stations to monitor what we call agromet variables, those are variables that are important for the agricultural sector, including rainfall, of course temperature humidity they want to know the swell, moisture and swell temperature and just to name a few once we have that information farmers will be able to plan better and know what type of weather conditions are occurring in the areas."
The second phase of this project was first launched in 2022 and the Minister Of Disaster Risk Management says that they are slowly moving towards phase 3 which entails the launch of their weather app which plays a key role in providing the farmers with accessible data.
Andre Perez, Minister, Blue Economy
"As we all saw a display of some of the samples that are going to be deployed across the entire nation especially in rural areas of course we just spoke about the dollar value which is over fifty six thousand dollars but that is just one of the components but this is part of as we are expanding in terms of the weather the MET service they provide and again as the chief met mentioned this is not only about hurricanes but this is ongoing 365 days per year so we need to get all this information together and this equipment will assist in giving more informed information the data which is important especially for today which is the agricultural sector which is important."
As a part of this project, the Met Services is also upgrading 20 of its weather systems.
