Abstract

The value of rainfall to agriculture depends as much on its distribution and reliability as on its absolute amount. Farmers in regions with a long established agricultural tradition, are fortunate in having the heritage of the accumulated weather lore of centuries for their guidance. This enables them to assess their chances of successful crop production. In the absence of reliable weather lore, the enlightened farmer, has had perforce to use rainfall means as an indication of likely expectation of rain, his most important climatic factor. Such expectations without reference to variability may often be quite misleading. The failure to allow for this variability has led to disappointing results in some agricultural ventures, and may account in part for the fatalistic attitude adopted towards attempts at predicting rainfall expectation. Hence it is proposed to expound in this note that an efficient expression of rainfall variability, which is of fundamental importance to the better understanding of seasonal crop variation, is statistically practicable, with the annual rainfall data of Nagercoil-Kanyakumari District.

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