KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- If farmers can't change the weather - or a seesawing climate - perhaps data-crunchers can outwit Mother Nature. Technologies like those refined by a Silicon Valley company with an outpost on the edge of the Kansas prairie now merge agriculture with algorithms to gird farmers against severe weather patterns. Think of it as farming meets "Moneyball," the popular sports shorthand for using data to beat the odds. Just purchased by agribusiness giant Monsanto for $1 billion, Climate Corp. is among those posing possible fixes for farmers whose crops are wilting from overheating, drought and increasingly wild weather swings. "We're moving into a period of very unstable weather,...
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