OneSoil and Rainbow Weather add hyperlocal rainfall forecasting for farmers
Swiss agtech company OneSoil and Polish startup Rainbow Weather say they are bringing a hyperlocal precipitation forecast into farm workflows. The main promise is a four hour decision window that helps growers protect fertilizer, spraying and other weather sensitive field operations.
European agtech is putting more weight on field level weather intelligence as rainfall volatility becomes a larger production risk. Swiss precision farming company OneSoil said it has partnered with Polish climate tech startup Rainbow Weather to add a hyperlocal precipitation forecast to its platform. The companies frame the move as a response to rising damage from extreme rainfall and the growing need for short term operational decisions on farms.
In the company release, OneSoil says extreme rainfall events have increased since the early 2000s and that extreme weather costs farmers in the European Union about €28 billion a year, roughly 6 percent of total agricultural production. The new feature is designed to show rainfall probability and intensity within a specific four hour window for exact coordinates. The example given is not just a farm in general, but a specific part of a sunflower field in France or a cornfield in South Africa.
Until now, OneSoil users could already track wind speed and temperature through the platform's Virtual Weather Station. The new Hyperlocal Precipitation Forecast is built on machine learning models that process radar, satellite and atmospheric data to identify patterns in how rainfall forms and moves. Rainbow Weather co founder Alexander Matveenko said that combination is what makes the tool fast enough and precise enough for practical use in the field.
The farm level use case is straightforward and economically relevant. OneSoil says fertilizing and chemical spraying are highly sensitive to unexpected rain because inputs can wash away immediately after a tractor pass, forcing reapplication, wasting labour and adding pressure on soil health. According to the companies, the feature is already being used by more than 15,000 farmers each month, suggesting demand for very short term precipitation guidance is already established.
Rainbow Weather was founded in 2021 by Yuriy Melnichek and Alexander Matveenko. The startup says it has raised €4.87 million in seed funding, surpassed 1 million installs, built a base of more than 120,000 active users and serves 400 business to business clients through its API. It also operates weatherindex.ai, an open tool that compares short term precipitation forecast accuracy across providers in real time.
OneSoil says its precision agriculture products have been adopted by more than 1.16 million users across Europe, Latin America, the United States, Africa and Australia, with about 140,000 annually active farmers. Although the item comes from a corporate release, the underlying issue is important for crop production economics because weather data is becoming directly tied to how farms time inputs, avoid losses and manage operational risk under a more unstable climate.