A start-up which helps insure farmers against losses from
increasingly volatile weather has received $42 million by way of
investment from Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and
Google Ventures.
WeatherBill, founded by ex-Google employees
David Friedberg and Siraj Khaliq, collates weather data from various
sources and sells insurance based on statistical analysis. The company's
workforce includes a team of software engineers and climatologists.
According
to WeatherBill, the $3 trillion annual global agriculture production is
increasingly hostage to the vagaries unpredictable weather
fluctuations.
Last year's tumultuous weather conditions caused
devastating floods in Pakistan, China and Australia and a heatwave in
Russia. According to the UN it was the warmest period on record
alongside 1998 and 2005.
According to a
UN panel of climate change experts, weather is set to become more
unpredictable and extreme in the 21st century, impacting everything from
food to water supplies, due to a build-up of heat-trapping gases from
human use of fossil fuels.
"More than 90 per cent of crop losses
are due to unexpected weather and climate change is increasing the
frequency of extreme weather events," CEO Friedberg said in a statement.