Prairie farmers can expect to see an enhanced selection of online weather and agronomic tools from WeatherFarm.com, following the recent transfer of the program to new owners.
The network has been purchased from the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB) through a new partnership between Glacier Media and agricultural meteorology firm Weather INnovations Inc., in the form of a new company called Weather INnovations (WIN) Consulting LP.
WeatherFarm.com provides near-real-time local weather conditions for more than 800 locations from Manitoba to British Columbia. These detailed site-specific reports are meant to give growers immediate information needed to make on-the-fly decisions on operations such as seeding, spraying and harvesting.
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The data collected from the network of wireless stations also drives an array of weather-based agronomic models, which can warn farmers in advance of the risk of crop diseases such as fusarium or sclerotinia, or insects such as wheat midge.
“Our goals in developing WIN Consulting LP and acquiring the WeatherFarm.com service are to enhance the monitoring capabilities and complement it with our other services already offered in Western Canada,” WIN president Ian Nichols said in a release.
WIN now operates several networks of weather and environmental monitoring stations across Canada, which provide data to growers, governments, academic researchers and crop insurance corporations.
The company also develops and maintains crop-specific weather advisory websites, including WeatherCentral.ca for grain growers in Ontario, MBpotatoes.ca for Manitoba potato farmers and sites for tomato, grape, tender fruit and sugar beet growers in Eastern Canada and Europe.
Weather information from the WeatherFarm.com network is already carried on Glacier Media’s agricultural websites, including those of the Western Producer, Canadian Cattlemen, Grainews, the Manitoba Co-operator, Country Guide and Alberta Farmer Express.
“We know how important local weather information is to farmers, and this partnership ensures that we will be able to grow those services,” said Bob Willcox, president of the Glacier Agriculture group in Winnipeg.
