Producers on King Island and across parts of northwest Tasmania can now access data on growing conditions for their region.
The combined efforts of Ag Logic and Cradle Coast NRM (via projects funded separately through the Tasmanian Innovation Hub and Agrifutures) have seen weather station networks established in Tasmania’s northwest, giving producers access to essential weather and soil moisture data.
Through our Farming Forecaster project, we can now add value to this data by providing producers and advisors with additional information on how weather affects pasture growing conditions, through a 4-month rolling pasture forecast.
Three Farming Forecaster sites on King Island will go live early in the new year. To help farmers better understand and take advantage of the extended capabilities of this data, we ran an introductory workshop on King Island in early December, showing farmers how the tool could help them make some fundamental decisions, particularly in preparing for dry times. It was a great turn out with eighteen primary producers attending – the BBQ was also fantastic with plenty of tasty King Island beef!
Thanks to King Island Beef Producers Group for their support in hosting this workshop and to Farming Forecaster expert Phil Graham and Ag tech expert Marek Matusek for their great presentations.
We have future events for other Tasmanian regions planned for early 2024 and we would encourage producers and advisors to get the most out of Farming Forecaster by coming along to these free events. If you’d like to find out when these are happening, and other drought management related events, join our mailing list here https://nrmsouth.org.au/project/farming-forecaster/