The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
A PART-time farmer from Spancilhill has developed a unique weather app, which provides farmers with on-farm alerts, included weather alerts, which aids them in planning their agricultural work. Dr John Garvey, senior lecturer in risk management and insurance at the University of Limerick, created FarmHedge, a free smart-phone app. “The weather alerts are specific to the farm location and they relate short-term forecasts to the 10-year normal for that location to provide information on grass growth, animal health risks and other farm activities,” he explained. John’s experience on the family farm in Spancilhill encouraged him to think about how farmers could use better weather information to help them plan their work. The very cold spring of 2013 and subsequent fodder crisis led John to think about better risk-management systems that could be made available to farmers. He began developing the app in UL, with funding from Enterprise Ireland. “I wanted farmers to have highly local and accurate weather information that …
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