PUT two farmers from anywhere across the country together and the first thing they'll talk about is, you guessed it - the weather.
But recently, farmers said these conversations have been more than usually harrowing as they said they've been frustrated by what they believed to be incorrect forecasting from the Bureau of Meteorology.
However, the BoM has announced its agricultural decision support service, which issued its first briefings were issued in early 2023.
A BoM spokesperson said, "the Bureau established its Agriculture Program in July 2017, to provide weather and climate services tailored to the specific needs of the agriculture sector.
"In September 2022, a partnership with Agricultural Innovation Australia enabled additional services to be provided via the agricultural decision support service. The first briefings were issued in early 2023.
"The agricultural decision support service is one of many teams within the Agricultural Program, (which) works with partners in the agriculture sector to deliver impact and value by: Improving weather and climate products and services for the Australian agriculture sector, including providing awareness of existing Bureau services and gathering feedback from customers in the sector to enable Bureau products to be tailored to priority agricultural needs."
The spokesperson said the Agriculture Program delivers a range of products and services to help the sector to plan and manage opportunities and risks, including:
"My Climate View (is a) free digital product developed with CSIRO and helps farmers and land managers understand what the future climate might look like for their location and commodity."
"It provides farmers with critical data to assess how climate trends, including changes to temperature and rainfall, might impact their business for specific commodities and date ranges in their location."
The spokesperson also said the Northern Australia Climate Program, "aimed to help improve the capacity of the red meat industry in managing drought and climate risk across northern Australia".
"The Agri-Climate Outlooks (ACO) project is building industry capability and confidence to interpret forecasts which includes: a decision support services which publishes region- and commodity-specific forecasts on YouTube," the spokesperson said.
"New tools to support better interpretability of the long-range forecast.
"A National Climate Training campaign, developed in partnership with the sector; and the Bureau's Agriculture Program continuously engages with the agriculture sector to develop new and improved products and services to assist the sector."
Sign up here to Good Fruit and Vegetables weekly newsletter for all the latest horticulture news each Thursday...
