French company Sencrop has developed a real-time weather platform, designed specifically for farming – to assist in decision-making on tillage enterprises.

The so-called ‘platform’ consists of small, localised weather stations and sensors – which are placed in the fields – and a real-time application, to which the information from these sensors and stations is sent.

Sencrop is designed to assist in improving organisation and daily decision-making for farmers. The platform can be linked to ‘decision-aiding tools’ (DAT) to simplify the whole process.

The idea behind the system is to avoid confusion arising from differing forecasts offered by weather services, which use a limited amount of ‘sensors’ over a very broad area. These standard services can give slightly inaccurate information, when it is applied to a very localised area.

The claimed benefit of Sencrop’s application is its 24-hour, real-time farming-specific data. The firm says that the system enables data analysis, allowing monitoring of field operating conditions. Simple alerts are sent to the end-user through the application.

It is designed to be easy to understand, in which information can be accessed at a quick glance and shared if needed.

There are specific ‘pages’ on the application for functions such as geo-location, forecasts, simple alert settings, plus a user-interface dashboard.

The weather stations themselves are mobile and are linked up through low-speed, long-range networks for data transfer. The system is compatible with most smartphones and PCs.

Sencrop says that its aim is to ensure “more precise, more efficient and ecosystem-friendly agriculture”. With such localised technology now promising to provide French farmers with more accurate data, can we expect to see an Irish equivalent sooner rather than later?