Producers, the farming community, industry and all areas of Government are invited to participate in an online survey to inform future research to continue to provide timely, easily accessible and reliable climate data by the NSW Government.
NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) Leader Climate Applications and Digital Agriculture Dr Anthony Clark said the $4.3 million Enhanced Drought Information System (EDIS) upgrade led by DPI will continue to provide farms with world-leading weather and climate data to inform business and farm management decisions during extreme weather and climatic events.
“Our climate can be very unpredictable, having gone from drought to floods in the space of just 12-months alone,” Dr Clark said.
“We are asking those across primary industries in NSW to provide input via an online survey on what improvements they’d like to see to our state-wide seasonal conditions monitoring and forecasting services.”
Dr Clark said during the last drought, DPI’s EDIS played a key role in providing detailed assessment of seasonal conditions for the State’s $20.9 billion strong primary industries, including an additional 40,000 users sourcing information during the peak of the drought.
“We want input from producers, advisors, policy and decision makers and our cross-agency colleagues to continue improving this service for the good and bad times ahead,” Dr Clark said.
Dr Clark said his team is keen to re-engage with the farming community as part of this evaluation and development program.
“Suggestions for improvements may range from new digital applications, installing field technologies on farm, new crop yield forecast feeds to third party tools or more opportunities for training on how to use systems like our drought risk monitor,” Dr Clark said.
“Ultimately, our aim is to provide farmers and the community with the practical tools they need to prepare for and manage variability in seasonal conditions and drought. We can’t do this well without input from across the sector, particularly farm managers.”
The EDIS upgrade aims to improve drought science and data quality at a farm and regional level, including providing early detection and forecasting of climate extremes, entry and recovery.
Provide your input to the EDIS development survey now via www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/edis-survey, which closes at the end of July, 2022.
The EDIS development project is funded by the Future Ready Regions program.
