IBM’s ‘The Weather Company' Gears Up To Help Farmers Amid Covid-19 Lockdown

With supply chain operations being severely disrupted with lockdowns to quell the rising cases of Covid-19, tech giant IBM has stepped in to offer help. With farmers and agri tech firms hit the hardest in this equation, its weather forecasting firm The Weather Company is offering its ‘Operations Dashboard’ for free for 30 days.

It works as a meteorologist-in-a-box to provide key insights from weather data. This will enable supply chain managers to make faster and more informed decisions when it comes to taking produce from farm to warehouse, as well as help plan logistics better on a given route.

“At a time when farmers and agri tech companies are facing supply chain challenges, it is crucial for them to have access to near real-time location-specific weather views,” said Himanshu Goyal, India Business Leader of The Weather Company. 

Technology To Combat Logistical Challenges Amid Covid-19

The Weather Company’s solution will help farmers make the right decisions on harvesting and storage of their produce, and the agri tech companies to manage on-ground operations. This will also help dodge wastage due to inaccurate weather information.

Its Operations Dashboard is powered by IBM’s Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System (GRAF). It is a commercial weather system that makes weather predictions on an hourly basis. It uses crowd-sourced data and advanced supercomputers to create more localised and accurate views of the weather.

What is more, its intuitive visualisation - available through browsers, iOS and Android devices - enables users to access information easily.

With this, farmers and agri tech firms can make better decisions by proactively monitoring weather and aggregate data for all locations in one place.