A group of scientists at The University of the West Indies, Mona has created a portal that will take a lot of the guesswork out of farming. There are plans to eventually make the technology widely available as an app, but for now it is a free-to-use online portal that can provide information on how to get the most out of growing 45 different crops.

Dr Dale Rankine, Agricultural Climate Modeling Research Analyst in the Department of Physics at The UWI, Mona, says the portal -- which has taken years of work to develop -- is a crucial game-changer for the country's agricultural sector, even as concerns mount about national food security. He is one of the members of the Climate Studies Group behind the project.

According to Rankine, farmers will be able to use the platform to make assessments based on rainfall projections, the price of major inputs and even irrigation costs.

“Farming is a risky business, any help the farmer can get to have an idea of what he is likely to get in any scenario is [priceless]. It... spares him the headache of going and making the investment and losing [money]. If you can show them a means by which you can help them save, they are willing to try,” he told the Business Observer.

Conceding that some farmers may be less technologically savvy than others, he was nonetheless confident that the information being offered would be easy enough to access -- even outside of the portal.

“Our collaboration with the meteorological services is critical because they provide a very user-friendly farmers' bulletin which is disseminated widely and has a feedback mechanism. So there are different avenues through which we are going to be providing information,” Rankine explained.

“We have direct collaboration with RADA [Rural Agricultural Development Authority] as well. They are in on the portal; they want to be able to disseminate the information to their farmers.”

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