Agriculture and information technology may seem far apart, but in fact the latest smart technology could help increase productivity in the primary sector, said the vice president of the world’s leading weather data agency.

For centuries, farmers have depended on their empirical instinct in farming, but the so-called big data can help them make more efficient decisions by suggesting numbers and direction, said Anthony Osborne, vice president of marketing at the Climate Corporation.

“Data-driven agriculture is growing at a rapid pace as farmers see the value these tools can provide them,” he said in a written interview with The Korea Herald.

“And, we expect the use of digital tools in agriculture to continue to grow over the next several years as we help turn information about a farmer’s operations into valuable insights and recommendations that they can easily access and then execute with confidence on their farm,” he said.

The Climate Corporation, established in 2006 by two former Google engineers, examines weather data to provide insurance to farmers in order to secure their profits even in the case of drought, heavy rains or other adverse weather conditions.

Its program combines hyperlocal weather monitoring, agronomic modeling, and high-resolution weather simulations to deliver mobile solutions that help farmers improve profitability by making better informed operating and financing decisions. Even more, the company advises on the optimal level of nitrogen use by tracking the level of nitrogen in their soil across the entire corn-growing season for paid program users.

The company claims its technologies help the global $3 trillion agriculture industry to stabilize and improve profits and, ultimately, help feed the world. The Climate Corporation currently operates in the U.S. through a free application service and paid services. The company covers 50 million acres, equivalent to 1 in every 4 acres planted in 2014 for corn and soybeans in the U.S.

“We put our predictions to work for the farmer, by delivering hardware and software tools that help make and execute more scientifically informed decisions, bringing farming from an era of intuition to an era of analytics-based decision making, ultimately improving the productivity and sustainability of farming operations,” he said.

In Korea, the data-driven agriculture has emerged as the hottest keyword, but is still in the early stage of adoption. The National Agricultural Cooperative Federation predicts big data analysis to be fully implemented to farming by no later than 2040. And the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs decided to renew its database and analyze relevant big data in order to provide better information about weather, climate, pesticide usage and others.

Osborne suggested a bright future for the industry.

“We are ultimately working to develop an ecosystem that wirelessly connects farmers’ equipment to their digital tools, providing a system where software, hardware and services work together to support farmers as they make critical decisions on their farms,” he said, claiming that the farmers would aggressively adopt the new technologies over the next several years.

“We understand that the ability to turn data into actionable insights and recommendations is important for agriculture around the world and can benefit farmers, regardless of farm size or farming methods.”

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)