Initiative overview
farmpredict was created to support the Australian Government’s efforts to improve drought preparedness and response. Its objectives are to provide timely, forward-looking and geographically detailed information about the effects of drought and other events on the Australian farm sector. This includes the ability to model non-drought events and counterfactual scenarios that can explore impacts of possible future events or policy decisions.
farmpredict predictions have been achieved by combining historical weather data, seasonal forecasts and climate data with agricultural models to generate ‘outcome-based’ indicators for specific agricultural impacts such as crop yields, pasture growth and farm business outcomes. This can be generated at a variety of spatial levels from national to individual farms.
Currently DAFF is collaborating with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) to implement farmpredict as the “engine” in the Australian Agricultural Drought Indicators (AADI), which will provide predictions across Australia at high resolution with an interface designed to support decision-makers. At present farmpredict only supports modelling for broadacre farming. Another expected evolution for the project is to improve model performance and accuracy and to expand the model to include other agricultural sectors (such as dairy farming).
