From a news release
For the 2018 growing season, Weather INnovations (WIN), AGRIS Co-operative Ltd, Wanstead Farmers Co-operative and Haggerty Creek Ltd. have joined forces to merge their decision support tools platforms – WeatherCentral.ca and AgGrower Dashboard – to offer more field-specific tools and expand an extensive weather station network for a wider producer audience in Ontario.
WeatherCentral.ca was launched in 2009 providing DONcast® and WHEATcast™ for wheat growers in Ontario. In 2012-2013 SPRAYcast® and BINcast® were launched to guide spray timing and grain drying for improved grain quality. Subsequently, field-specific tools for corn and soybeans, such as growth staging models, were added to guide field activity planning and made available to all Ontario grain growers.
In 2016, AGRIS, Wanstead Farmers and Haggerty Creek installed 80 automated weather stations and sponsored the AgGrower Dashboard for corn, soybean, wheat and tomato growers in their growing region of southern Ontario. The AgGrower Dashboard was funded in part by Growing Forward 2, a federal-provincial-territorial initiative, assisted by Ontario’s Agricultural Adaptation Council.
This platform’s primary focus was to provide a live weather network to help member growers with timely 4R-based decisions. These two strong platforms are merging to provide a more comprehensive 4R- focused toolkit and to expand the current weather station network across Ontario. This will offer more timely, local weather data to enhance the utility of the various tools.
The new platform’s name reflects the powerful combination of tools and weather insights: 4Rcast.com. The new platform will be available for free for existing WeatherCentral and AgGrower Dashboard users. The platform’s 4R and field-level focus will ensure farmers can make timelier and prudent decisions, especially around inputs management.
“We have always enjoyed strong alignment with our co-op partners,” noted WIN President Ian Nichols. “Combining our two platforms to provide more robust decision-making and support tools for growers builds on the strength of those relationships and allows us to reach out more broadly across the province.”
“Making the right decisions around the right time, the right place, the right product and the right rate are central to 4Rs success for both farmers and their retail supporters,” says Jim Campbell, General Manager of AGRIS Co-operative Limited. “4Rcast will help efficiently guide users to do the right thing for the best results.”
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