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By CAITLIN CROWLEY
A METRO news weather presenter turned Agtech entrepreneur has set her sights on revolutionising how Australian farmers use weather forecasting to minimise risk and maximum profits.
Jane Bunn said she was inspired to develop her own weather forecasting platform after being asked by viewers, particularly in regional areas, what weather app she used personally.
She said she had to confess, she didn’t use any and couldn’t recommend one.
“I’ve got three minutes each night and no matter how much I beg and plead with the news director, I rarely get any more and when sport goes long, I get cut,” Bunn told the Caller.
“So I’m familiar with trying to get the right message in as few a words as possible across – so that you know exactly what happened.
“There’s so much good data out there now – let’s actually apply that and get it into a way that you can actually take advantage of it.
“Then let’s get it out to as many people as possible and then that should at least help a lot of Aussie farmers boost their output.”
Bunn, 7 News Melbourne’s weather presenter and a meteorologist, started her career at the Bureau of Meteorology and said while she loved that job, she grew frustrated with the media.
“They would change the words of the forecast and change the meaning of the forecast without realising they were doing it,” she said.
She said after many frantic phone calls to journalists to correct the their language, she decided to “take out the middle man” and become a television weather presenter herself.
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Now she’s launched Jane’s Weather – an online forecasting tool which combines global weather models with local observations to produce tailored weather forecasts and insights, such as frost risk, spraying conditions, evapotranspiration to schedule irrigation and growing degree days to plan crops.
“You can say, I planted paddock A on this particular date, I sprayed it on this date so then all of that forecast data is applied to your specific numbers, and so the answers you get out the end is exactly for your farm,” Bunn said.
“We’ve got frost risk which goes through hour by hour and when we get the data coming in from your farm, it will be tailored to that particular area. So it will show you which corners you’ll see it first.”
Bunn said the platform could have wider applications than just farming – potentially benefitting any business where decisions are influenced by weather conditions.
“I would love it if every farmer in Australia, and everyone on a construction site and everyone in mining and everyone making their own energy – even in logistics – would go, ‘I don’t know how I operated before I had Jane’s Weather, because this has changed so many things about what we do for the better.'”
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Jane’s Weather was among more than 20 exhibitors this month at a special showcase at Toowoomba’s Agtech and Logistics Hub.
The event was the culmination of GroundUp, an accelerator program run by the Agtech and Logistics Hub in conjunction with the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), to support businesses looking to take their technology to the next level.
Agtech and Logistics Hub director Thomas Hall said it was great to give GroundUp participants the opportunity to collaborate with industry and present their products and services to potential customers to refine market fit.
“The showcase is a fitting way to end GroundUp, a program designed to drive innovation in the grains sector, with a focus on being grower-led to find real solutions for on-farm problems,” Hall said.
GRDC’s senior manager for the Northern region, Gillian Meppem, said it was fabulous to see individuals and organisations coming, not just from agriculture, but Ag-adjacent industries, to solve the problems of grain growers.
“It’s not innovation for innovation’s sake – we’re innovating to solve the problems, to assist Australian grain growers to remain productive and profitable,” she said.