November 19, 2024

By Michelle Pelletier Marshall, Women in Agribusiness Media. Reprinted from our sister publication, Women in Agribusiness Today.

While we may debate the causes of the recent rash of unpredictable weather in the U.S. and abroad, we can likely agree that extreme changes are evident. From 113 consecutive days with temperatures over 100 degrees this summer in Phoenix, Arizona, to the Midwest experiencing the driest last few months since 2012 to multiple hurricanes causing devastating damage the U.S. Southeast, we are all being impacted, especially those in the ag sector.

To shed some light on weather and future expectations, WIA Today spoke to Bill Kirk, CEO of weathertrends360. “Captain” Kirk, as he is so nicknamed, specializes in helping farmers and agribusinesses leverage tools to predict weather for up to a year in advance. Weathertrends360’s tool, FarmCastâ, builds out weather intelligence reports using 125 years of weather data, 24 climate cycles and statistical analysis to deliver year-ahead weather forecasts with 85 percent accuracy. This up-to-the-minute weather intelligence helps guide the direction for farmers as they move through the planting, growing and harvesting seasons. The predictive sales analytics component also affects business outcomes for 10,000 seasonal categories – such as lawn tractors, sprinklers, fertilizers and pest control – that you’d find in your local stores.

Access to this weather intelligence has a transformative impact on farming and the agriculture sector, creating efficiencies that streamline planning, sales and growth, and maximize yield and profit potential. Take into consideration that, according to Kirk, on a year-by-year basis, an increase of just one degree Fahrenheit results in lettuce sales increasing by 2 percent, grass seed sales by 4 percent, and tractor sales by 5 percent. 

We asked Kirk to tell us more.

WIA Today: Catastrophic weather events have been the bane of ag’s existence as of late. You endeavor to help farmers understand the power of year-ahead weather intelligence and its revolutionary impact on farming. How do you do this?

Kirk: “Weathertrends360’s (Wt360) core competency is predicting year-ahead temperature metrics (hi/lo temps, Growing Degree Days (GDD), Cooling Degree Days (CDD), or Heating Degree Days), weekly rainfall and snowfall out a year across 32 million grid points (every one mile on Earth). We employ a statistical (trillions upon trillions of them) 24-climate cycle model approach: this is not your TV weatherperson’s meteorological/physics-based approach that struggles with a 7-14 day forecast that changes 2-4x a day with new data. Our forecasts do not change once issued and that’s why Fortune 500 companies have relied on weathertrends360 for 22 years, and farmers and ag firms for the past 9 years.

FarmCast is a daily email PDF report that provides zip-code-level farm forecasts that track vital weather statistics since the farmer planted his or her crops. These stats include how much rain has fallen, Growing Degree Days since planting, temperature trends, etc., as well as forecast information on today, this week, next week, year-ahead by month, and a crop milestone prediction tool. This critical information helps farmers better determine: what type of seed will do best during the anticipated weather trends for next year?; do they need more nitrogen and disease fungicides if it’s excessively wet, or more herbicide and insecticides if hotter and drier?; best planting dates; pollination heat risk; best harvesting dates and more. It’s not just about severe weather, but the cumulative daily weather events that make or break crop yields and a farmers’ profits.

Also, we don’t just predict the weather a year-ahead, we also guide business outcomes for 10,000 seasonal categories you’d find in your local Target or Tractor Supply store. Just about everything in a Home Depot or Tractor Supply garden center and how it is all very weather sensitive. This past spring was the wettest in 40 years in parts of the U.S. and Home Depot blamed the weather for same-store-sales coming in -3 percent versus last year, well below Wall Street expectations. No one is planting flowers in their garden if the ground is saturated and it’s raining all the time.”

(NOTE: weathertrends360 year-ahead severe weather outlook issued in January 2024 predicted all the severe weather this year: $286 billion in weather damage risk, the most in seven years.)

Image courtesy of NOAA/NCEI

WIA Today: What are some of the key trends, using this historical data and demand analysis, that you see for 2025 that would affect ag?

Kirk: “Weathertrends360’s technology is showing a dramatically different weather cycle in 2025. This year – 2024 – was plagued by the most tornadoes and convective storms in the last 13 years, record floods early in the season, and drought that fortunately developed after the crop-growing season with catastrophic hurricanes, but that’s about to change in 2025. Droughts, the worst wildfire season in 10 years and another destructive hurricane season is the theme for 2025 with tornadoes and hail much below last year’s levels and below average with reduced risk from these events.

Brazil’s full season 2025 crop is likely to have the wettest growing season in nine years with strong yields by April 2025. This will continue to suppress prices. Some drought concerns will develop late spring – summer for the Western and Northern Corn Belt that might help create some bullish price news. China, Malaysia and India are likely to have the driest conditions in 10 to 14 years in 2025 that could also help bring some much-needed upward price moves for farmers.”

WIA Today: What are some success stories using these tools? I know AgReliant has been one of your customers…

Kirk: “While many firms were talking about a severe 2024 drought year like 2012 and 1988 in the preseason, wt360 was projecting the coolest and wettest conditions across the Western and Central Corn Belt in five years with nearly ideal weather conditions for record yields. Without having a detailed week-by-week forecast, it was impossible to see that the dry conditions were coming much later in the fall and not during the core summer growing season.

Some success stories include: AgReliant was a client for many years. The agronomists, sales teams and AgReliant farmers preferred FarmCast as it gave them sound year-ahead intelligence on the season ahead to help pick better hybrids for the expected weather conditions, and planting windows after high-risk frost and freeze periods.

John Beasley is a long-time ag commodity broker client who helps farmers with pricing risks using our year-ahead intel. He advised his clients that there was high risk for corn prices to plummet in 2024 based on our favorable weather outlook. That obviously happened. Always better to be proactive than reactive.

Dan “The Farmer” Martin (Pennsylvania farmer): This long-time farmer in Pennsylvania makes adjustments with our FarmCast forecast. We warned him of several important events with a late frost/freeze in early and middle April (7th and 21st frost happened), and to subsequently expect the driest growing season in four years with just enough rain to keep yields up, followed by the driest fall in 10 years for his central Pennsylvania farms. All of these predictions allowed Martin to adjust his planting, growing and harvesting tasks accordingly, saving him time, money and product.”

WIA Today: At WIA, we provide agribusiness leaders with key insights for production, sales and marketing, logistics and much more to aid in more-informed decisions for their business operations and success. How does weather forecasting to guide farmers benefit these agribusinesses?

Kirk: “Any farmer, any ag business will tell you that weather is always the big unknown when planning business activities. For 22 years we’ve helped over 125 Fortune 1,000 companies in retail, supply, financial services, pharma, consumer (12 verticals in total) become proactive not reactive to the year ahead weather and how it will impact their business. The ag industry is slowly embracing the idea that forward-looking weather information is important, but with the vagueness of NOAA long-range forecasts that say things like there’s a 33 percent chance the summer will be hotter than average or drier than average, that’s just too vague to be a valuable planning tool. FarmCast seeks to change that.”

WIA Today: Are there opportunities to invest in FarmCast data and your proactive weather optimization techniques?

Kirk: “We are always looking for strategic partners in any of our 12 verticals that we support. We have ag-related clients like Tractor Supply, Bayer, Pedestal Commodities, Wine Access, Central Garden & Pet, Hackett Ag Financial Advisors as well as 400 FarmCast farmers.”  

WIA Today: How do the recent severe and unpredictable global weather events affect investments in agriculture? Will there be key sectors that open up for funding, or opportunities for guiding investment decisions through weather intelligence?

Kirk: “Unfortunately, there is too much focus on climate change and things that MIGHT happen 20-100 years from now, but almost all businesses can’t act on that vague information.

Weathertrends360 focuses on the actionable one-year window that allows for smarter decisions that can dramatically improve a company’s bottom line. There has been a lot of venture capital and private equity money that went into ag startups and bigger ag firms, but some big ones went bust (Gro Intelligence, for example), which always makes investors a bit leery. The bigger thing that appears to be helping renewed interest in ag and weather is AI. AI is making some improvements in short-range weather forecasting (days 1-14) but has a long way to go in our space of year-ahead weather intelligence.”

ABOUT BILL “Captain” KIRK

Bill Kirk, a USAF Gulf War Veteran and CEO and co-founder of Weathertrends360, is known as the “REAL” Captain Kirk. For 28 years, he has led the company to become the world’s most accurate year-ahead weather forecasting technology firm, using a unique statistical and climate cycle methodology rather than traditional physics—a tribute to his belief that “God invented math, man invented physics.” His innovative forecasting has delivered predictive sales analytics to Fortune 500 companies, transforming business strategies in any weather.

A Rutgers University graduate with a B.S. in Meteorology, Kirk was New Jersey’s only Air Force Distinguished Graduate under Governor Kean. With a Top Secret SCI clearance, he supported missions like Desert Storm, NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia, and Operation Just Cause, earning numerous military awards. Though he’s no phaser-wielding Starfleet captain, Kirk is an expert marksman and passionate leader. His work has appeared on Fox Business, CNBC, and ABC 20/20, and his research has featured in top Wall Street reports. Under his guidance, Weathertrends360 has won 13 national and international awards, was ranked as Forbes’ 5th Most Promising Company, and Kirk was listed as the #17 CEO on Owler’s list of 167,000 CEOs in 2017.

A committed philanthropist, Kirk supports first responders and Christian organizations and serves as an advisor for Millersville University. He’s also a founding member of the Open Atmospheric Society. Kirk resides in Lehigh Valley with his wife and daughter, proudly advancing Weathertrends360 with his team—and ready to set WARP SPEED AHEAD!