Personalized Farm Forecasts
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Farming is full of risk and uncertainty. That’s why the ultimate goal with farm data is to turn the data into helpful predictions. Brad Fruth, Director of Innovation at Beck’s Hybrids says that’s why their FARMserver team has created the Ready2Plant tool, to help farmers forecast the optimal time to plant their crop.
Fruth... "We know that there are times that farmers are slow to get started planting and then they don't stop soon enough. And so, you know, as soil temps come up, it's really about looking at the next three days of forecasting. And, you know, our practical farm research data has shown the earlier, the better, especially on soybeans. And so we have an opt-in service now that will send you a note and say, hey, in the next 24 hours, we think these fields are going to be fit to plant and vice versa. You can be out planting on a Friday and the sun is shining, putting in a bunch of acres. And not know that in two days, we're going to get three inches of rain and the temperature is going to drop. So we also tell them, Hey, the forecast doesn't look good, even though the sun shining and it looks beautiful, you should maybe stop planting. So things like that are things that really we're working on. How do we help people manage and how do we bring together this data and make that real-time. to all of our growers because 350 pages is great, but honestly, it's going to be about tailoring that to an individual farmer's operation, how they farm, how they want to farm and how we can help them drive net farm income on their specific operation."
Check out farmserver.com for more information.
