'Neighbors request screenshots of our weather meter'

"Do you have a screenshot of your weather stations?" That is a question that Marianne Fokkema and her family regularly receive. Or have now, because several arable farmers in the region have now also purchased the Sencrop weather station to always have the weather data in view.

"When the rain falls from the sky in torrents, I check every 20 minutes how much rain falls on our plots," says the Frisian Marianne Fokkema. Together with her parents, sister, cousin and with the help of a permanent employee, they cultivate 110 hectares of seed potatoes and 7 hectares of blue poppy seed. The hectares are spread over a radius of 30 kilometers. That is why Fokkema has been working with 3 Sencrop weather stations for 8 years now.

"It's very handy that we can now see how much rain has fallen and whether we can go onto the plot via the app on our phone," says Marianne. Before planting, the family checks on which plots they will place the weather stations, after harvesting the potatoes, the stations come home again. "Then we usually put them next to each other in the garden, we can immediately check whether they measure the same," explains Marianne, who sees a minimum deviation of 0,3 millimeters in precipitation at most.                                                                      

All precipitation data in the region in view
Not only can the Fokkema family keep an eye on their own plots, with the Sencrop App they can also view the data from the other weather stations in the region. "That is handy and interesting", says Marianne, who says that they have 2 weather stations together with Hoogland BV. As a result, the advisor can also watch and give plot-specific advice on crop protection, harvest or planting time. But not only in the neighbourhood, even the precipitation data from their company in Romania 2.800 kilometers away is shown in the app at a glance. They work with the rain gauge Raincrop, which measures the temperature, humidity, dew point and cumulative precipitation. Fokkema does not use the anemometer and blade net sensor. "We can guess the wind if we look at the windmills," says Marianne with a laugh.

Local differences in rainfall
Marianne and her family mainly use the Sencrop weather station to see the number of millimeters that have fallen per plot. "We see really huge differences, if you see a shower coming on Buienrader and you look at your Sencrop app, you just see that one plot gets 19 millimeters and the next plot a few kilometers away only 8 millimeters. is her experience. "Now we can just take a look in the app. If you see that 10 millimeters of rain has fallen on the remote plot, you immediately know that you don't have to go there. We like the Sencrop weather station," concludes Marianne Fokkema then.