The first rains that signal the beginning of the growing season kick off a flurry of activities in rural, agricultural communities. Farmers decide when to plant, how much labor to allocate, how many resources to devote to that season’s crop and so on.

For those in the famine response community, the start of season (SOS) is also the earliest indicator of what’s to come over the following months. As a result, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have been working to use the SOS as an early indicator of food insecurity. Researchers at the university’s Climate Hazards Center (CHC) have released a study in Environmental Research Letters(link is external) linking conditions at the beginning of the growing season to grain prices in five African countries. This is the second study the group has published analyzing the impacts of the SOS, and the findings should enable even earlier forecasts of potential famine.