Assessing Climate Information Use in Agribusiness. Part I: Actual and Potential Use and Impediments to Usage

Abstract

A project for the development of methodology to enable agribusiness decision makers to utilize more effectively climate information involved investigation of three agribusiness firms, as well as measurement of their actual and potential use. The firms investigated included a food processing firm, a seed corn producing company, and an agri-chemical producing firm. Climate information is currently being used to some extent by each firm. This information, generally historical in nature, is often collected by the firms. Corporate officials make many decisions using data on conditions influenced by past climatic events, e.g., averages of past yields, but the role of climate information is not explicitly identified. The decision makers interviewed expressed considerable interest in making fuller use of this information. However, they considered climate predictions and year-to-date assessments of conditions as having potentially greater. value than historical data, although these two desired data type currently were not being used to any great extent. Lack of procedures to integrate climate information within the decision processes of these large, complex firms was a major impediment to greater utilization of climate information. A scarcity of information about climate data was another major impediment.