With extreme weather conditions very much in the headlines , Mark Rowe brings us a timely investigation into the help that innovative weather forecasting technologies can offer farmers, manufacturers and retailers. Forewarned, as they say, is forearmed.
Go deeper with GlobalData
“Blame it on the weather” is an adage that always helps when something goes awry, not least when farmers survey crops ruined by rain, or food producers and retailers wonder about ice-cream sales drooping in a damp summer. Well, the development of the technology of weather forecasting means that such an approach holds true less often that was once the case.
“Traditionally, organisations have worked to a 24-hour window,” says Gary Holpin, Business Development Manager for Britain’s Met Office (Met stands for meteorological). “And while we still get jokes about our forecasts being wrong, the fact is we can now predict three days ahead with the accuracy we could only manage for one day 20 years ago,” he stresses.
Today, forecasters can provide long-term predictions of wet weather, heat waves and other extreme events. Thanks to a studious collation of data of weather patterns over the years, they can also predict with confidence when certain weather features are most likely to occur. For the food industry, which can be so heavily influenced by the weather, the tools available for weather forecasting have important implications. This means more than simply heading for cover when bad weather is on its way: with the advance knowledge available, the food sector, from farming through manufacturing to retail, can frequently tailor demands and make contingency plans according to weather patterns.
Britain, US leading the way in weather
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataUnsurprisingly, the Met Office plays a crucial role in Britain’s forecasting, but this goes way beyond the traditional five-day map. The Met Office now tailors many services and products towards specific industries, including the food sector, being one of only two such organisations worldwide that offers such services, the other being run by the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The weather of course has a major impact on agriculture. Naturally, it can be essential for ensuring healthy crops and livestock. But if a farmer is caught out by adverse conditions – from sudden flooding or the risk of drought, to conditions that might promote blight or disease – the weather can have a dramatically negative effect. In the UK, the Met Office’s services can help farmers to maintain productivity and profitability, and to minimise any losses relating to the weather.
These include a general monthly summary, a record of weather data with daily values, means and averages of significant weather (hail, snow, fog, thunderstorms and gales) that help farmers assess how weather may affect spraying, harvest, irrigation and planting. Information is available via telephone, mobile phone, fax or the Internet and farmers can also talk to a forecaster one-to-one.
Growing insurance issue
A subsidiary of British farming insurance company NFU Mutual’s subsidiary, NFU Mutual Risk Management Services Ltd, anticipates that weather will soon become a significant farming insurance issue as climate change becomes a reality. “Insurance is fairly limited at the moment in terms of weather because we just don’t have the extremes that you get elsewhere in the world,” said Sid Gibson, chief underwriting manager for the service. “If you offer farmers insurance against drought or hail damaging their crops they will usually decline because the odds are in their favour. But the wetter winters are already making winter crops more difficult and I think that even in five or ten years’ time there will be changes and we are going to have to think about new policies and cover.
“The Met Office’s services are very interesting. They may not help a farmer with an orchard of soft fruit from a hailstorm but it will let them get the sheep down from the hills or the cattle inside. ”
Insurance and contingency plans are also relevant to the farming sector and the European Commission is consulting on alternative ways to protect food producers against risk across the European Union (EU). Ideas in a recent discussion paper involve spending public money, combining it with private services helping farmers deal with risk. The Commission suggests state funds help insurance premiums for farming policies on natural disasters, extreme weather and disease. Brussels says subsidies should only cover up to 50% of premiums and policies should not allow farmers to recoup more money than they lost in a particular disaster. The Commission also suggested a purely public system of emergency aids for farmers in cases of crises where income from agriculture in one year is less than 70% earned in the previous 12 months.
Benefits up the chain
Food manufacturing and retail services can also benefit from weather forecasting, in ways that go beyond the common sense level – ie in summer you are more likely to sell more ice cream, while in winter demand for chocolate increases. The Met Office’s Weather Sensitivity Analysis (WSA) provides detailed historical patterns to show just when demand for particular foods may rise and offers valuable insight into how weather affects consumer behaviour and product/service demand. Under WSA, the Met Office has accumulated a vast bank of historical sales and marketing data related to the weather. This shows, for example, that for the typical supplier of hot meals, sales can decline by £70,000 (US$128,700) a day each time the temperature rises by one degree above 20°C and that, accordingly, sales of salads, fresh foods, deli and dairy products increase.
“We can tell producers and manufacturers when we are likely to get a sustained period of hot weather,” says Holpin. “That means that people are more likely to want to hold barbecues, which has implications for meat suppliers.”
Weather, of course, does not recognise national boundaries and similar information is available in other countries. Figures from the US-based National Grocers Association show that food manufacturing in the US tends to reach its peak in August, which enables many processed food companies to take on seasonal staff.
However, the United States experiences more extremes of weather than the UK and the US National Weather Service (NWS) provides a crucial role for farmers, manufacturing and retail, as witnessed by the huge damage caused by last month’s Hurricane Katrina. It operates a number of weather safety programmes – mainly web-based – that focus on what the industry should do in extreme events, such as thunderstorms, hurricanes and ultra violet radiation safety.
It also issues detailed post-storm assessments of major events. The Climate Services Division of the NWS offers detailed data for individual states on the probability of specific extreme events, such as heavy rain, storms or drought. These include climate variability, real-time monitoring of climate, and assessments of the origins of major climate anomalies. The products include the mitigation of weather-related natural disasters and range from a week to seasons, and extend into the long-term future, and cover the land, the ocean and the atmosphere.
