Food+Tech Connect Answers: Could Google Maps New Weather Layer Be Used In Agricultural Planning?

“It sounds like a fun toy, but I don’t see anything changing with this,” says Eric Reuter of Chert Hollow Farms in Missouri.  “The National Weather Service provides more than enough good data mining for us.  Repackaging it and adding geographical features like roads doesn’t do anything for me.”

For farmers, seeing weather patterns over time helps in decision making about when to plant or harvest.  Google Weather summarizes this detailed information into sunshine or rain icons, limiting its usefulness on farm.

Additionally, for many farmers in places like the Rocky Mountain West where dry, hot days over the summer are consistent, looking at the day to day forecast is just not that important.  “I look at the weather a lot when I care about it, in the spring and fall,” says Jill Bell of Bell Organics in Draper, Utah.  “During those times, there is a chance of frost.  Other than that, there is just not a lot you can do about it.”

Several industrial agriculture web-based tools already exist to help famers know more about the weather.  Websites like AgWeb and The Progressive Farmer give detailed reports about weather trends around the nation.  Even weather.com has a special agricultural forecast, just for farmers.

For startups or other organizations looking to integrate this feature into their web or mobile platforms, you might consider adding an option to the maps not currently available elsewhere. Email alerts notifying farmers of particularly severe weather events, like flash floods, hail or frost, might give better notice than the National Weather Service currently is able to do.