Climate and crop models to help farms make better decisions

A SUITE of innovative software tools to support farmers undertake Agricultural Risk Management activities and enable better planning and decision making in the industry is now available.

Department of Agriculture and Fisheries Senior Agronomist Howard Cox said the web-based interactive support tools would help farmers, farm advisors, policy makers and researchers in agriculture.

“Farmers endure widely varying rainfall conditions whilst needing to make critical management decisions prior to every cropping season,” Mr Cox said.

“Crop producers and advisors will now be able to go online or use their phone or tablet devices and examine the full range of possible outcomes given that a hundred years of rainfall data drives these programs.

“This new website uses advanced climate and crop models to allow users to produce hypothetical scenarios regarding the financial effect of different levels of inputs, such as fertiliser, or resources such as water and nitrogen in the soil.”

The site hosts five tools known as CropARM, FallowARM, NitrogenARM, ClimateARM and the Deep P Calculator.

ARM had previously been developed by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries with investment from the Grains Research and Development Corporation.

The tools were revamped by the University of Southern Queensland under the Broad Acre Grains Partnership with the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, while CSIRO contributed to the development of the Deep-P Calculator.

You can find the tools via www.armonline.com.au.