Grain Producers SA blasts Bureau of Meteorology for prioritising website over vital weather radar
The Bureau of Meteorology has spent nearly $100 million on a website revamp, but angry farmers say they can’t get a radar that will actually give them accurate forecasts.
Angry South Australian grain growers are demanding their need for more precise weather forecasts be given higher priority, slamming a “staggering $100 million” website upgrade.
Grain Producers SA says the cost of installing a Doppler radar – which can detect weather conditions including all types of precipitation, wind strength and direction – in the Eyre Peninsula would have cost only a fraction of the digital facelift.
Brad Perry, the peak industry body’s chief executive, said it simply wasn’t good enough for the region’s farmers to be left in “a radar black hole” after being told there wasn’t funding for the forecasting technology.
“Growers on the Eyre Peninsula are being told to rely on data from Adelaide and Ceduna radars, which are hundreds of kilometres away,” he said.
“That’s not good enough for safety, it’s not good enough for precision farming and it’s certainly not good enough for a region that contributes billions of dollars to the state’s economy.
“Every time the forecast changes, it costs them … farmers are spreading fertiliser, spraying, harvesting and planning logistics based on incomplete information.
“Grain producers in the largest cropping region in the state have very little accurate information about storms, hail events or strong rainfall which affect cropping decisions, risk management and insurance.”
Peter Blacket, who farms in the southern Mallee, argues the Eyre Peninsula is one of three SA agricultural areas in desperate need of a Doppler radar, suggesting sites at Peterborough in the Mid North and Coonalpyn in the South East would allow for more accurate forecasts.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce has also lambasted the enormous cost of the Bureau of Meteorology’s website upgrade, revealed to be more than 20 times the original figure announced last month.
Worse still, he claims, the changes have made the site harder to use.
“It was one of the most visited sites or the most visited site … now we’ve got this fiasco and we find out it’s cost us $96m to stuff something up completely,” he said.
