The Queensland Farmers’ Federation (QFF) with project partners Enzen and NNNCo have installed the LoRaWAN gateways and sensors on two demonstration farm sites for a Digital Agriculture project.
Over 50 sensors have been connected and cover a range of variables important to production and infrastructure and include:
- Soil moisture, water quality, volume, and flow through irrigation systems;
- Plant health and water movement within the trunk;
- Energy consumption and potential production from waste streams;
- Climate variables such as temperature, humidity, rainfall and windspeed;
- Vibration monitoring of infrastructure; and
- Movement of plant, people, and livestock.
A real time dashboard will display the data in real time allowing immediate analysis to inform management decisions to improve time, energy, and resource use efficiency on farm. The dashboard is currently in development and will be tailored to each individual site.
While the dashboard is being developed, data from the sensors is streaming in and being stored securely in the cloud. Data privacy is a top concern, and vital for garnering deep insights. The sensors in use for this project will provide information to assist the farm in making decisions about:
- Biosecurity and quality of products;
- Pasture utilisation;
- Maintenance planning from monitoring of infrastructure;
- Resource use efficiency including energy, water, fertilizers and pesticides; and
- Cultural and practice change.
Analysis from this project will provide real businesses cases for the two sites and demonstrate the benefits of agtech for industry through a number of case studies. There are similar projects underway across other agricultural industries and QFF will work with other industry members such as Nursery and Garden Industry Queensland (NGIQ) to develop a rich resource of what works, as well as the barriers and challenges encountered.
We have a range of agricultural energy efficiency case studies including implemented projects HERE. If you have any energy efficiency related questions for the team, please get in touch at energysavers@qff.org.au.