Smarter farming through collaboration
A new partnership between agro tech company FieldSense and agribusiness company Danish Agro will provide farmers with hyper local and exact weather data for optimising yield. The weather station from Cordulus is the next big thing in agro technology.
Even in a technologically advanced food industry, the weather has an immense impact on agricultural production. For example, in processes such as harvesting and sowing. Mother nature simply has the last word. But better monitoring of local weather can give farmers the possibility to distribute their time and resources better, optimising yields from the fields. Cordulus, an agro tech startup, has partnered with Danish Agro to distribute their smart weather stations. The specs of the weather station are based on a close collaboration between Cordulus and their customers: the farmers.
Farming surveillance
The concept is simple. A weather station – a pole with some electronical hardware on – is easily installed in the field. From there, it sends data about rainfall, soil temperature, air temperature, wind speed, humidity and much more to an app every 10th minute. The cost is subscription based, so farmers are ensured support and upgrades.
The data is vital in optimising farming. Weather is actually much more local than most people think. When it’s raining near the farmer’s house, it might still be suitable harvesting weather out on the field. It’s just not visible from the house. Denmark, for example, had a lot of rainfall in 2017. Here, better weather data would have proven useful to micromanage the fields, wherever the soil was suitable to be worked despite the weather.
Data is sent every 10 minutes about rainfall, soil temperature, air temperature, wind speed, humidity and more which optimises farming
Collaboration for the best solutions
Partnering with Danish Agro can help the small company by tapping into the customer-base of one of Denmark’s largest agribusiness companies. The cooperation between a small, agile startup and a large established company can lead to weather data of a quality yet unrivalled for Danish farmers.
There are a lot of interesting projects in the pipeline of Cordulus. But one of the dreams is to offer the possibility to share weather data between the farmers’ respective weather stations. Much like the open source movement in the software industry. And farmers are demanding this kind of knowledge sharing, because it is mutually beneficial.
The case of the weather station is in many respects a tale of cooperation. This is very characteristic of the Danish food cluster and one of the ways Danish food innovations and solutions push the boundaries in the international food industry.
Read more about Cordulus and Danish Agro
