Monsanto is making a bold move with a unique partnership with the Weather Channel. Nothing like taking two of the things most important to farmers and making it easily available to them in an online and social networking environment!
The Weather Channel Interactive, in partnership with agricultural products leader Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON), announced a new section on weather.com® dedicated to weather and farming at www.weather.com/farming. Within the Agriculture News & Forecast, the main feature is the Farmers Forecast, which includes up-to-date weather information that matters most to the agricultural community, such as severe weather alerts affecting crops and detailed data about precipitation, wind and soil moisture.
The new Farmers Forecast adds farming-related alerts in addition to the severe weather alerts already available through the weather.com site. These will alert consumers to warnings with freeze, frost, high wind or hail indicators for each forecasted day. With precipitation being critical for the farming community, not only does the page include the percent of precipitation, but it also includes an actual projection of the amount of rain that is expected.
Weather.com/farming will offer several components to help farmers make decisions before and throughout the season. From the same page, users can easily change locations to keep up with multiple farms or compare sites. Among the information included on the new section:
· Soil moisture information
· Detailed wind data
· Sunrise and sunset times
· UV index
The section is also a one-stop resource for the latest agriculture news. Users can stay up to date with articles related to the industry while checking out the next day’s forecast. Users can easily bookmark any page within the new section, such as the Farmers Forecast, to return to this practical resource and connect it to social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and others.
Along with the new section within the weather.com site, Monsanto will also run an online campaign throughout 2009 featuring many of its brands such as Deltapine, DEKALB, Asgrow, Yieldgard, Roundup Ready and Roundup PowerMax.
Post Update: If you’re an iPhone owner make sure that when you use your browser that you select the “Classic Weather Channel” link instead of the mobile version. This isn’t available in the mobile version yet.
There are two kinds of information that are important for Pessl Instruments: “ground truth” and expected forecasts. The Austria-based company claims that it offers a one-of-a-kind tool for farmers:
“What we do is we measure the ground truth,” Gottfried Pessl, President of Pessl Instruments said. “That means what’s going on actually on the field of the farmers but we now also bring in the weather forecast. The weather forecast comes from a Swiss company we have teamed up with and this Swiss company delivers us a five day weather forecast in real-time for that particular farm.”
Gottfried adds that the technology is based entirely on the internet giving farmers the option of accessing the “ground truth” and weather forecast information on any internet capable electronic device, such as a cell phone.
“We have a wireless system which brings the data in a centralized server and through that centralized server our clients can worldwide have real time access to the data,” Gottfried said.
The information collected from Pessl Instruments, Gottfried explained, is valuable for irrigation management for plant protection requirements. He says the collected data can help farmers “optimize the use of the chemicals, to prevent the diseases to prevent insect pest outbreaks and also to have a full traceability of their crop.” Plus, he says using weather forecast data together with real-time weather helps farmers schedule their farm operations associated with the weather, such as harvest sprays.
“Most of the activities on the farm are very much dependent on if the weather is good or the weather is bad,” Gottfried said.
The company now exports tools and technology to about 70 countries.
I interviewed Gottfried about his products and technology. You can listen to my interview with Gottfried here:
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Willie Nelson is sending out pleas for help. He’s calling for donations to help family farmers that are being devastated by severe weather and flooding in the Midwest.
Severe weather in nine Midwestern states is devastating family farmers. Disastrous floods in Iowa and Wisconsin have hit farmers especially hard–more than 30 counties in Iowa alone have already been declared federal disaster areas. More areas are expected to be threatened by rising flood water in the next few weeks.
Farm Aid is working now with local farm groups, churches, and rural organizations to get emergency funds out quickly to flooded farmers. This week, we made our first grant of $10,000 to a local Iowa farm organization to provide emergency assistance to farmers in need right now.
Farm Aid has a long history of helping farm families survive disasters — but we need your donation to do it. Can you help by making a tax-deductible donation of $25, $100, $500, or $1,000?
When major disasters like this strike, desperate farmers and farm organizations call Farm Aid. With your help, Farm Aid can help by providing emergency funds for families to buy food and cover living expenses and by supporting emergency hotlines and organizations that provide legal, financial and emotional counseling to farm families in need.
Please make an emergency contribution to Farm Aid’s Family Farm Disaster Fund right now and we will rush your funds to the stricken area.
Stay Strong and Positive,
Willie Nelson
It might have been a sunny spring day yesterday but today is a different story.
Here’s the scene on my deck a few minutes ago. As the hail stopped the sun poked out for about 10 seconds too.
Yep, a typical midwest weather pattern for the spring. I’m sure someone out there will get the notion that this is unusual and the effect of global warming.
Me, I’d take some warming right now.
If you're involved in agriculture then you should become familiar with HumaneWatch.org.
