Silicon Valley Delivering Weather Data to the Farm

Climate Basic

Jeff HamlinAre you ready for the world of technology to deliver weather and field data about your farm fields right to your phone? Many farmers are enjoying that kind of information at their fingertips right now. The San Francisco based tech company, The Climate Corporation, is offering all that data with a free service called Climate Basic, a handy tool in an age of expanding geographical areas for farmers.

“You’re no longer farming 200 acres out your back door. You’re farming 1,000 acres, 3,000 acres, spread over 50, 60, 100 miles,” says Jeff Hamlin, the Director of Product Marketing and Agronomic Research at Climate. “Some growers are getting really far spread out, and just keeping track of what’s happening on each field each day so you can go to the right field at the right time to maximize your efficiency, it’s a challenge. And the Climate Basic service gives growers that information at their fingertips. Just pull out your phone and be able to see that the home farm’s had this much rain. This farm’s tasseling today, and what am I going to see when I get to the field in the truck?”

He said the fast, easy to use service now monitors about a third of the corn and soybean acres in the U.S.

“There’s about 160 million acres of corn and soybeans in the United States every year, and we’ve got over 50 million of those acres using the service today.”

Hamlin says the free service is more than just weather. It will actually generate useful reports too.

“We can tell you how much rain fell at your farm,” he told HAT. “We can also tell you what the growth stage is of the crop in the field. We can tell you what the plant-available soil moisture is. You can generate planting reports that you can take to the FSA, generate your 578’s and see what was planted, all your farm numbers. You can get alerts about hail. You can log activities and share all that information with everyone across your farm as far as which fields were planted on what dates, when you put nitrogen on, when you sprayed a particular application on this field. It’s a really robust service that allows you to save a lot of data and generate information to see what’s happening on every field.”

The upgraded pro service adds features that will help manage and improve farmer profitability. The Climate Corporation encourages non-users to sign up for the free Climate Basic at www.climate.com and take it for a spin.

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