How the Right Crop Weather Forecast Protects Your Bottom Line

As a business owner, how do you take care of your bottom line? You spend exactly as much money as you need to and nothing more. You minimize waste by making excellent use of all of your resources. You maximize profit through thoughtful planning and hard work. For farmers, the right crop weather forecast can make or break their revenue. 

Farmers are some of the smartest individuals on the planet when it comes to making efficient use of what’s available and planning ahead. That’s why farmers like you know that a customized crop weather forecast can simplify scheduling their farming operations.

The DTN weather platform offers a unique and powerful suite of products to help crop producers remain profitable. Contact a team member today to find out how we can help you.

 

Generational Knowledge Meets Scientific Software

Farmers from around the world have been honing their craft for hundreds of years. The basics needed to grow crops are simple: sun, soil, water. But how much sun? How much water? How warm does the earth need to be, and for how long? 

Crop producers are experts at understanding the answers to those questions. But they have no control over what Mother Nature decides to give them. 

You know what you need to grow crops successfully, but you also deal with the weather’s variability every day. And local forecasts are hit and miss when it comes to accuracy. 

What if you could really know what was coming? How could you use that information to improve your operations? An accurate crop weather forecast can help you protect your income by alerting you to the conditions heading your way.

 

A Crop Weather Forecast Makes Irrigation More Efficient

Imagine that you’re monitoring your field and notice it is almost ready for irrigation. Your local weather forecast notes a storm front heading in your direction, though. So you decide to wait for a few days and see if your field gets rain. 

Unfortunately, “local” forecasts can be very generalized, leaving you without useful data. They may be using towns a few miles away as their reference points. In fact, it could be 100 miles to the nearest large town referenced in a weather report. You often are stuck trying to interpret a splash of green on their radar that might or might not reach your crops.

Do you water now, or hope the rain will reach your field? The information from your local station isn’t precise enough to be very useful. 

Or you can consider this alternate scenario. You’re monitoring your field and know you’ll need to water soon. But you don’t want to waste resources since a storm may bring water to your crops within the next few days. 

You receive a custom weather report for your field and learn there is a significant probability that the approaching system will adequately water your crops. This forecast allows you to hold off on irrigating, saving time and resources.

Your crop weather report can also tell you precisely how much water landed in your field during any given weather event. This data makes it easy to determine how much watering, if any, you still need to do.

 

Make an Effective Plan for Fertilizer and Pesticide Application

Figuring out the best time to apply fertilizer can be tricky. The soil can’t be too dry, or the nutrients won’t incorporate. But precipitation can’t arrive too soon after application, or it will wash away your product. And high winds during application could shift and redistribute sprayable forms of fertilizer.

A hyper-local weather report will give you the information you need to determine the best timing and application rate for the type of fertilizer you use.

Just like crops, pests and plant diseases have a growing season. They thrive and reproduce more readily with specific temperatures and moisture levels. Crop-focused weather information tells you when conditions are favorable for harmful pests so that you can plan treatment accordingly. 

Wind can play a big part in applying fungicides or insecticides. Spraying when winds exceed

label recommendations could result in you spraying your neighbor’s field, opening up a can of worms that no owner wants to handle. 

DTN weather solutions give you detailed information that includes wind forecasting. Continuous monitoring and trend summaries make it much simpler to determine when to apply additives.

 

Go Hyper-Local With a Crop Forecast

Your local television forecasts give you general information about the weather in your area. They tend to cover broad regions and focus their data on bigger cities. These reports leave you lacking the particular data you need to protect your crops and your profit.

A customized crop weather forecast focuses on your specific location and brings you information that is more accurate and relevant to your operations. 

Here are a few things a custom forecast can include that you won’t receive from your network station:

 

• Ongoing Monitoring – You will have access to precise, real-time information whenever you want it. Comparatively, most weather stations only update information every 1-6 hours.

• Crop Weather Summaries – Weather impact reports will be at your fingertips. You can view daily, weekly, and seasonal summaries for specific crops all over the world.

• Sun and Soil Reports – Know what’s going on under the surface as well as above it. You can easily assess which days are suitable for fieldwork when you have access to soil temperature and moisture reports.

• Critical Alerts – Would you like to know immediately when your forecast includes rain? Or perhaps your crop plan would benefit from an alert when your area reaches a specific temperature. Choose a product that allows you to set up notifications for the parameters that matter to you. You can receive alerts immediately on your desktop or mobile device.

• Greater Accuracy – Customized reports from a crop-specific forecast are 20-30% more accurate than standard reports.

• Adaptive Insights – The best weather station for farmers will record and analyze the air and soil information from your site to give you frequent, actionable updates.

 

Let DTN Weather Options Protect Your Bottom Line

Farmers have to make critical, incremental decisions about the best steps to take when growing their crops. DTN gives you customized information to streamline your decision-making and maximize your yield. 

Connect with a team member today to check out our WeatherSentry platform for agricultural producers. Your bottom line will thank you.