Precision Weather Forecast Enables Turnkey Decision Making

Understory, a weather network, edge computing and machine-learning company, together with Monsanto, will provide localized weather information to Argentinian farmers. The weather networks don’t require maintenance and can easily be used in remote areas of the country.

Each station in networks provided by Understory provide temperature, humidity, rainfall, hail, evapotranspiration and growing degree unit information through its weather and artificial intelligence core. Every independent station provides 50,000 measurements per second to assist with at-the-moment decision making.

The companies say this information will inform Monsanto’s decision in Argentina around irrigation, harvest timing and seed production.

“Argentina is an agricultural giant that produces 22% of the world’s soybeans, yet many growers there and around the world, still lack data insights due to the remote, harsh farming conditions,” says Alex Kubicek, Understory CEO. “Our collaboration with Monsanto promises to deliver daily operation insights to farmers around the world to yield better, healthier crops, and it can be deployed anywhere with the need for oversight or management.”

These weather networks can be integrated with third-party sensors and Understudy installs and operates the network. Data is provided to users in real-time.

Monsanto and Understory recently performed a pilot program to see what the partnership could provide in Hawaii this past year. Understory provided refined weather data that was used in Monsanto’s daily decision making.

There are Understory networks across five major metropolitan areas in the U.S. right now, and the company plans to expand by 5,000 more stations by the end of 2019. It will also make its technology available to other agricultural partners in the near future.