Why Fasal built its own AI based weather forecast system (Fasal μClimate)—
Let me ask a question — how many times it happened that you saw on your weather app that weather will be clear in the evening but it actually rains. For you, it might be okay, you didn’t bring umbrella and you are going to get wet. But for a farmer, it may have devastating consequences. Farmers plan their day based on weather forecast. If I, as a farmer have scheduled spray in the afternoon for my 10 acre land because I saw in the morning that weather will be clear but it actually rains at 4 O’clock. I lost the spray and the money. It went down the drain with the rain.
Not only above, but changes in the weather greatly affect growth, state and potential crop yield, the disease pressure, the irrigation scheduling and fertilisers scheduling. Not only plants, but also the demand and supply for the yield depends profoundly on weather conditions. Directly and indirectly, weather is the culprit for the loss of the annual world crop. Even if you just consider the United States, they lost close to $700 B in crop production in 90+ weather related events. That’s mammoth.
Accurate weather forecast are also important for forecasting the spread of fungal pathogens that are carried on the wind. This can allow for preventive measures of crops to avoid massive losses.
Let’s just take the example of Downey mildew in grapes. Managing downey requires thousands of dollars in a relatively average size of vineyard. But, the fact of the matter that Downey can be forecasted if you have correct forecast for the vineyard in reference itself. You save money, you improve the quality and you save effort, simply put.
Now the question arises — when agriculture productivity depends highly on weather conditions, then why the existing weather forecast systems are not perfect? Answer to that question is — farmers rely on weather forecast provided by meteorological department or universities or some weather app. These channels use weather station that sits at an airport, over a tarmac, or 50 Kms away from the actual farm location.
Atmospheric conditions of farm differ vastly from those in the larger areas. We call that microclimate of the farm. To simply put, the temperature in your field is different than you garden, different than the city, different than another farm which is 10 kms away from it, different than the field which has a large canopy and different than the field which just has grass…And I will keep repeating this unless you understand how significant this is.
Getting the accurate microclimate around the crop canopy allows farmers to potentially minimize disease and pest incidence, effectively manage crop growth, optimise resource and plan optimal harvest time.
To help farmers achieve this Fasal has built its own micro-climate weather forecast model. Fasal’s microclimate forecasts are tailored to each farm location and are performed at a point scale, not at a kilometer-wide spatial scale. In essence, as Fasal collects more data, our AI based microclimate forecasting algorithm incorporates real in-field information and relates it to publicly available weather forecasts, so farmers get real-time, actionable information relevant to day-to-day operations at their specific farm.
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Grow More, Grow Better with Fasal.
