The Philippine National Irrigation Administration (NIA) has teamed up with U.S. weather tech company Tomorrow.io to bring AI-powered weather forecasting to farmers in the Philippines. Tomorrow.io also works with major U.S. agencies like NOAA, NASA, and the Department of Defense.
Tomorrow.io said on Wednesday that the partnership is meant to help Filipino farmers deal with changing and unpredictable weather. By using AI, the goal is to improve farming and increase productivity.
Working together with the Department of Agriculture (DA), the partnership plans to change how weather forecasting helps farmers. They will use Tomorrow.io’s AI technology and special low-orbit satellites to give better weather information.
These satellites can give very detailed weather forecasts for small farm areas. This helps farmers get the right advice on things like when to use pesticides or when to delay watering their crops if rain is coming.
“The Philippines is made up of many islands and has remote farming areas, which makes weather forecasting difficult. Regular ground-based systems can’t fully handle these challenges,”
“Our proprietary space-based satellite constellation was purpose-built to fill those coverage gaps and provide high-resolution, real-time weather intelligence across the country, even in the most hard-to-reach and underserved areas,” said Shimon Elkabetz, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Tomorrow.io.
The statement said this partnership is happening at an important time, as the southwest monsoon (habagat) has already started affecting parts of the Philippines, marking the beginning of the rainy season.
In 2024 alone, bad weather caused PHP 57.78 billion (about $1.04 billion) in damage to the agriculture sector. This affected more than 1.4 million farmers and fishers in the Philippines.
According to the Department of Agriculture, the bad weather led to the loss of 2.19 million metric tons of crops across nearly 1 million hectares of farmland.
These numbers show how important it is to have better weather forecasting tools and farming methods that can handle changing climate conditions.
“As the only global provider of this type of space-based weather technology, Tomorrow.io ensures truly national coverage,
“This allows for faster, more accurate early warnings, empowering farmers and local industries to make informed decisions during severe weather events”, Elkabetz added.
By giving farmers accurate weather information for their exact location, this project helps them make wise choices, use resources better, avoid losses from bad weather, and grow more crops even when the weather is hard to predict.
Tomorrow.io gathers detailed weather data from its satellites around the world. Then, it uses intelligent AI and science-based models to create very accurate weather forecasts.
The company said their weather forecasting technology is already being used in many projects around the world, including programs in Africa run by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In the Philippines, the agreement lets Tomorrow.io offer its weather services not just to farmers but also to important areas like shipping and aviation, where up-to-date weather information is very important for safety and smooth operations.
Tomorrow.io is a worldwide platform that uses the latest space technology, advanced AI, and special weather models to help people and businesses prepare for and handle weather challenges.
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