A privatized crop warning system in the USA.

Over 1000 weather stations are operating in the western USA in a multistate disease warning system. They are operated by several private service-oriented companies, including Western Farm Service, Wilbur Ellis, Terra Spase and Ag Unlimited. These companies work cooperatively with the universities to develop, validate and implement algorithms. The weather stations, manufactured by Adcon Telemetry, collect meteorological information in many crops, for many types of disease and insect warnings. The data is reported by radio from the weather stations automatically. At central data collection facilities, data is analysed to determine disease and insect risk as well as information for irrigation, planting, harvesting and nutrient timing. Information is then distributed daily to hundreds of farming operations by Internet, fax, proprietary Adcon server software or personal visit. This information is combined with remote sensing, GPS, GIS, weather forecasting and scouting technologies to make crop management decisions at the farmer or consultant level. Farmers pay a fee for a service-oriented information subscription. This technology usually reduces at least one fungicide application and/or improves crop quality or yield by 10–50%.