The aisles of the Salon de l’Agriculture in Paris are full of innovations for the agricultural world. The founders of Weenat, a company from Nantes, are taking part in this 58th edition, for example: it is a connected weather station. It allows farmers to have very precise information on the water needs of their plots, for example. thanks to sensors are in fact connected to an application called Weenat.
A “peace of mind”
Weenat is an online and mobile application that “measure the various agro-weather parameters as closely as possible to the crops“, explains Laurent Leleu, the general manager of Weenat. The sensors linked to the application calculate the level of rain, the quantity of water in the ground and the temperatures: “the app helps farmers make informed decisions by knowing what is happening on the field“, he details.
Thanks to Weenat, farmers can find out how well rain has managed to penetrate the soil of a plot and how much moisture is under the soil. These calculations are impossible with the naked eye, emphasizes Laurent Leleu. The farmer can therefore decide to irrigate in a way that is adapted to the state of the plots, for example.
The installation of Weenat’s weather sensors costs 550 euros, to which must be added a subscription of 12 euros per month. This investment is quickly profitable according to Laurent Leleu: the application allows for example to avoid a trip by tractor. “If you load your sprayer to get to the plot and you realize that it is not passable or that the weather conditions are not the right ones, you make the weather station profitable by not doing it”, describes the managing director of the Nantes company. Weenat is also a way to save “water towers“: the farmer does not irrigate if he sees that the plot is already well loaded with water.
“Weenat’s DNA is peace of mind. This is one of the socio-professional categories that works the most in France. They make a lot of decisions every day: they are entrepreneurs, they are agronomists, they are mechanics. This people’s peace of mind is priceless“, emphasizes Laurent Leleu.