Ontario farmers start a weather network of their own

May 27, 2016

Network is called Ag Grower Daily Dashboard

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

Farmers in southern Ontario will have another option when it comes to weather forecasts, and the information is being supplied by members of the agricultural community.

AGRIS Co-operative Ltd., Wanstead Farmers Co-operative CO. Ltd. and Haggerty Creek Ltd. are working together on the AG Grower Daily Dashboard, which can provide farmers with local weather measurements including rain, humidity and wind.

“We’re going to have over 80 automated weather stations plus another two hundred manual ones in between (Windsor and Chatham),” said Dale Cowan, senior agronomist with the participating farms. “It allows the grower to go online, register their fields and get field-level rainfall precipitation, as well as corn heat units and growth modeling as well.”

Farmers can get similar information from Environment Canada, but the Dashboard can give producers information that may be tailored to their farms. The information from the weather stations will be sent to a data centre, then farmers will be sent the relevant information each morning.

“If I’m a large scale farmer and I have land all over the place, I want to know where it rained, so I know where to send my equipment in the morning,” Cowan told CBC.

Thanks to a provincial grant of $558,554, farmers can use the online service for free for the first year. After the pilot project if finished, annual fees are estimated to be under $300.

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