In the near future, your field staff and farmers will be able to receive individualized weather forecasts and production tips from their mobile phones. This new development that will assist vital decision-making processes has been made possible through a strategic collaboration between eProd Solutions Limited and aWhere , a global agricultural intelligence company that collects weather data from satellites and local ground-based weather stations. You will now be able to send out daily short-term forecasts.
Weather Data is fundamental to agricultural intelligence because the effect of weather drives crop physiology, pest pathology, and daily operational/economical decisions. aWhere’s unique weather data is specifically designed for agricultural use, and includes up to 10 years of daily observations across the entire agricultural earth, along with current weather and weather forecasts updated four times per day.
While weather information may not at first seem like an important service given the free and widespread forecasts available from the newspaper to the internet to farmers, however, highly accurate and localized weather reports – based on a 9 by 9 km grid – will assist important decisions regarding what crops to plant, when to spray, to plant or harvest – or when NOT to spray, plant or harvest!
The information is also valuable to farm input suppliers searching for better ways to sell their goods. Instead of spending time selling and marketing to farmers who may have missed good weather, agricultural service providers can use the weather data to predict which farms are most in need of their products. Buyers can also track which crops are coming to harvest and when to assist with logistics decisions.