Free Planting Date AdvisorSM Tool on climate.com Helps Growers Identify Ideal Planting Window


The Climate Corporation today announced that the free climate.com service is now live for the 2013 growing season. Using remote sensing technologies, physical and geospatial mapping, unique weather simulations and proprietary agronomic models, climate.com provides growers with field-level weather monitoring and forecasting, field-specific crop insights and decision support tools to help them better manage their operations and increase their profitability. The Climate Corporation also announced the availability of Planting Date Advisor,? a new climate.com tool that dynamically quantifies spring and fall freeze risks by planting date for each field. With the help of Planting Date Advisor, growers can better identify an ideal planting window and evaluate the potential risk-reward of their seed relative maturity choice.

"Every year growers miss out on hundreds of millions of bushels of yield potential valued in excess of $1 billion because of lack of access to data and insights to inform their planting date decisions," says Jeff Hamlin, director of agronomic research at The Climate Corporation. "Planting Date Advisor is a unique online tool that growers can put to use in the coming months to understand freeze risks by planting date and risk-reward tradeoffs of their seed relative maturity choice. The goal of climate.com is to help growers increase their profitability, and Planting Date Advisor is the first tool that can help growers make more profitable decisions in the face of increasingly extreme weather." Powered by The Climate Corporation's unique weather monitoring, forecasting and agronomic modeling technology platform, Planting Date Advisor:

• Calculates the risk that a corn or soybean* crop in any of over 20 million U.S. fields could be damaged by a spring freeze post emergence or by a fall freeze before the crop has a chance to reach full maturity, with risks calculated for each potential planting date.
• Allows a grower to vary the relative maturity of the seed to assist cost-benefit analyses regarding the additional fall freeze risk the grower would be taking on by planting a longer-season, higher-yielding variety.
• Provides dynamic field-level planting date risk analyses using real-time weather forecasting technologies.

The full climate.com service drives more profitable farming by saving growers time and improving their operational decision making. In addition to Planting Date Advisor, key climate.com features for the 2013 growing season include:

• Farm-Level Dashboard: Growers can easily scan current field-level weather conditions and key status indicators for each of their fields including 24-hour and 7-day accumulated precipitation, growth stage, soil moisture, projected yield impact of season-to-date weather conditions and estimated yield projections.
• Precipitation and Temperature Tracking: Growers can track daily and cumulative season-to-date precipitation on each of their fields, monitor high and low temperatures, and receive notifications of yield-impacting and operational-impacting weather events.
• Soil Moisture Tracking: Corn and soybean growers can monitor current soil moisture levels to evaluate whether a given field is experiencing drought or excess moisture stress and to assess field workability.
• Growth Stage Tracking: Corn and soybean growers can track the field-level progression of their crops through each growth stage to full maturity during the growing season, and monitor the expected timing of future crop growth stages based on season-to-date weather conditions.
• Crop Impact: Corn and soybean growers can track the occurrence, severity and estimated yield impact of heat, drought, excess moisture and freezing weather events.

"Farmers tell us that they can't get all the weather and agronomic data that they need to make informed daily decisions," says David Friedberg, CEO of The Climate Corporation. "We have built technology to acquire, analyze and provide weather and agronomic data for every field and operation in the United States, allowing farmers of all sizes to improve their outcomes and profitability using simple tools on climate.com." Growers can create a free trial account at www.climate.com. Ongoing free access to the climate.com service is available through Climate Corporation authorized independent crop insurance agents.

About The Climate Corporation
The Climate Corporation's mission is to help all the world's people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change. The company aims to protect the $3 trillion global agriculture industry from the financial impact of adverse weather-the cause of over 90 percent of crop loss-with fully automated weather insurance products. The company's unique technology platform enables the real-time pricing and purchasing of customizable weather insurance using proprietary global weather simulation modeling and local weather monitoring systems. The Climate Corporation's products pay out automatically based solely on measured weather conditions, requiring no claims process and no waiting for payment. For more information, please visit www.climate.com or follow the company on Twitter @climatecorp. *Soybean support will be available March 15, 2013.

03.08.2013