The Internet of Things (IoT) is facilitating enormous change in agriculture, even though most farmers barely know what it is or how it can affect their operation by increasing efficiencies and, in turn, boost their bottom line.
New Zealand company Regen, established 10 years ago, uses a network of on-farm sensors that feed soil and climate data into the cloud to help manage 18,000ha, giving farmers advice on when to irrigate, but chief executive Brigit Hawkins says most clients don’t realise IoT is at the heart of the platform.
“Although IoT is incredibly important for us and our customers, they still don’t actually know what it means, so it’s really important we don’t talk about having an IoT solution, because they’re not 100% sure what it is,” she says.
“As a result, they’re pretty certain they don’t need one of those.”
But IoT is actually already part of many farmers’ businesses, Hawkins says.
One of Regen’s customers, a Canterbury-based dairy farm, has 18 separate sensors, or data sources, on the farm, as well as using two external sources, to inform decisions about irrigation.
“So for that single farm, that’s over 2000 data points every single day that is brought together through IoT connectivity, our platform and the algorithms that underpin it to give to them what appears to be something really simple, enabling them to actually use that data,” she says.
Add to that the data collected in dairy sheds covering animal health, milk quality and milk temperature, and from farm machinery recording activities like fertiliser application, that’s an enormous amount of information being uploaded to the cloud. Companies like Regen, recently acquired by Israeli-based soil sensing and data analytics company CropX, specialise in unscrambling that data and turning it into something useful for farmers.
“If a guy’s got cows to milk, breaks to move, fertiliser to apply and staff to manage, wading through tens of thousands of data points himself to work out what to do and how these different activities interlink, is not something they’re ever going to do so for us in the industry; being able to actually pull these things together and create the insights that are meaningful is what’s required to enable the power of the technology,” she says.
Hawkins was among the speakers at a recent online webinar hosted by AgritechNZ together with Amazon Web Services, the leading provider of technology and software to companies working in the IoT world.
“The world is changing, this is true not only for agriculture, but for any industry as we spend more time at home nowadays with technology, and leverage ways to get things done more efficiently with technology,” AWS head of IoT for agriculture Rachel Bradshaw says.
She says farming has changed more in the past 120 years than in the previous 10,000 years, and that’s being accelerated by IoT.
“If you took a farmer from 425BC and that farmer visited a farm in the 1900s, he would still see tools he recognised and have the capability and the skillset to use those tools, but if you took that same farmer and put him on a farm of today, he would probably think he’d landed on a completely different planet and that’s because there have been so many changes,” she says.
The changes over the past century or so include the introduction of selective breeding of livestock, the use of fertiliser, mechanisation and the use of irrigation. Alone, those changes have transformed agriculture but even bigger change is imminent, says Bradshaw.
“You’ve probably heard the saying, or you soon will, that data is the new oil, which means that it is so valuable to companies because it helps them understand their business better, what customers are interested in, and what they like and don’t like,” she says.
“It helps farmers understand how to better produce their crops, how to improve soil and how to have happier livestock which, in turn, increases yields.
“There’s all this information that can come from data and we’re seeing deeper focus on data.”
Bradshaw says with the world needing to produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed an expanding population in the face of challenges, including diminishing arable land, climate change, a depletion of natural resources and a declining workforce, innovative technology has become imperative.
Already IoT is being harnessed by companies like New Zealand-based Halter to monitor cow health and enable stock to be herded remotely; Teralytic, who make probes to monitor soil moisture and nutrient levels, and Autogrow Systems, which recently introduced a new product called Folium for use in greenhouses.
“When I first got into IoT the common question was, ‘Can we do it, is it technically possible?’ But, over the past seven or eight years this has become significantly easier,” says Autogrow chief technology officer Jonathan Morgan.
Folium monitors temperature, humidity, CO2, barometric pressure and radiation in greenhouses, down to individual plant level.
“I was talking to one of our consultants the other day, and he said 20 years ago a microclimate was your farm and then we started getting more into a controlled environment and a microclimate became your greenhouse and now microclimate is your plant,” Morgan says.
Bradshaw says the collection of data and using it to create efficiencies and profits is already happening and the trend is bound to accelerate. She says there are already 75 million online devices in people’s hands around the world, and that is predicted to rise to 225m by 2025, “or even jump into the billions.”
“For us that means having a fully-integrated, collaborative system,” she says.
“It means you’re able to meet the changing demands and conditions within your operation, within your supply network, and meet your customer needs.
“This allows you to have control of your data to enable your business and employees to make data-driven decisions.”
