The Agricultural Producers Association of Saskatchewan hopes to increase its membership by offering online, local weather service.
At its recent annual meeting, APAS launched a new web portal network called myRM.ca.
Residents in rural municipalities that are APAS members will be able to access community information such as events or road closures through the sites, as well as weather information from a weather station linked to that RM’s portal.
The stations will be part of a network operated by WeatherFarm, which already has 300 stations in Saskatchewan.
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Former APAS president Greg Marshall said the farm group will add up to 70 more stations to that network.
WeatherFarm works with Earth Networks, which operates the largest weather network in the world and owns WeatherBug.
“We lack good weather information in this province so we have tried for a number of years to encourage farmers to put these weather stations on their farms,” said Marshall.
“They haven’t picked up on the idea, and so that’s why we decided we’d make it part of our incentive package.”
APAS used to offer a cash discount in January for RMs that rejoined during that month. The weather station has replaced the discount.
Marshall said many RMs told APAS they saw the need for a website, but the cost was prohibitive.
Combining the two services is a win-win, he said.
Seventeen of APAS’s 64 member RMs had initiated their portals as of Dec. 15. Earth Networks technicians are working in the province to set up the weather stations.
Marshall said farms are getting so large that conditions at one end of a farm may differ greatly from those at the other end. Local weather stations can help make farm management decisions.
“If you want to go to the other end of the farm to spray, (a station there could indicate) what is the wind speed and direction, what’s the temperature and did it rain,” he said. “That’s sort of the beauty of being able to share. If I have one and my neighbour has one and he lives closer to the other side of my farm, I can access his weather station as well.”
WeatherFarm manager Gary Ash said users can customize their weather services by building an alert system using up to 10 weather stations and five alerts per station. That provides 50 alerts of impending weather conditions that could affect crops and livestock.
