The challenge
Preparing farmers for future droughts
Australia is predicted to face more extreme weather in future, including more frequent and prolonged droughts.
Preparing for future climate scenarios is critical to farmers so that they can continue to produce high quality crops and livestock.
The agriculture sector needs new, location-specific climate prediction tools for better planning and decision making.
Our response
Farm-specific climate projections for the next 50 years
Climate Services for Agriculture (CSA) is an online platform designed to help Australian farmers build resilience against future drought and climate risks.
It combines historical, seasonal forecast and projected climate data to indicate how future climate could impact a specific farm in any location of Australia.
CSA is built on our advanced INDRA technology platform.
We've applied advanced analytics to CSIRO and BoM climate data, as well as other data sources, to provide useful insights on the risks of producing a particular crop or livestock for a specific location.
CSA covers a range of commodities including wheat, barley, canola, lupins, apples, almonds, beef and sheep. It will soon cover up to 90 per cent of Australian producers.
CSA is being developed in partnership with the Bureau of Meteorology, FarmLink Research and the Australian Government's Future Drought Fund.
The results
Better prepared for a changing climate
CSA aims to help to reduce the impacts of drought and climate change on farmers.
The open-access platform is available online now for farmers to use.
When complete, CSA will contain millions of data points for one location, providing a range of insights for farmers.
It's currently being trialled across eight pilot regions to gather critical user feedback and input to ensure the platform is relevant to farmers and the wider agriculture sector.
In future, the underlying INDRA technology platform could be applied to other industry sectors impacted by climate change.