Cibo Labs – Satellite Assisted Forage Budgeting

Summary

The Romani Pastoral Company Digital Livestock 4.0 initiative provided an opportunity to demonstrate and leverage Cibo Labs commercial and R&D platforms to provide an overarching paddock-to-company pasture monitoring platform for RPC, MLA and the other providers.

The overarching objectives of the demonstrator were to provide Romani Pastoral Company (RPC) and other participating solution providers with a “near real-time” operational satellite image-based pasture monitoring service for the entire property aggregation with a specific focus on providing weekly estimates of pasture biomass to support forage budgeting and stocking decisions. The project involved undertaking field calibration and validation of pasture biomass estimates and implementation of the Cibo-Agriwebb API level integration with Agriwebb’s Feed on Offer (FOO) calculator. Cibo Labs also provided web service endpoints for other companies involved in the RPC/MLA demonstrator. Most importantly, the project provided the opportunity to work with Romani staff to discuss specific requirements and to seek and receive feedback on the utility of the solutions.

Objectives

The objective was to demonstrate the capacity of digital technology on a working farm and show how the property owner can benefit from accessing and analysing data collected remotely.

Key findings

The project has confirmed that the remote sensing and machine learning methods being used by Cibo Labs are capable of high prediction accuracies exceeding R2 values exceeding 0.9 and median prediction errors of <250kg/ha. Importantly, the imagery products are not a replacement for on- ground knowledge and assessment, but rather a compliment to save time, leverage on-ground knowledge, manage risk and make more confident decisions.

The project has demonstrated the value of investing on tools to enable easy on-ground data collection. Field data collection is typically seen as an onerous and resource intensive commitment. This does not have to be the case. Using the Cibo Labs Biomass Collector App and taking 15 minutes per week when you are already in the paddock will not only ensure the model is continuously calibrated across a very complex landscape but increase trust in the numbers.

Benefits to industry

Digital AgTech providers often make claims about where their technologies and solutions are up to. Digital farms play an important role in vexing these claims and determining what red meat producers can deploy today and the value proposition behind each.

The Digital Livestock 4.0 Demonstrator has provided significant opportunities to improve the quality and benefits derived from the Cibo Labs PastureKey service now operating across 50 million hectares of Australia’s grazing industry. It has also provided significant opportunities for business-to-business collaboration which is driving system integration and increased simplicity and value to producers.

The development of the Cibo Labs PastureKey service and collaboration across businesses over the last four years is providing opportunities for a step-change in sustainable grazing management across the industry. With continuous improvements in data science, remote sensing, and engaging producers in rapid data collection we will soon be providing pasture biomass estimates for every farm in Australia on a weekly to monthly basis.

MLA action

The learnings from the Romani Digital demonstration farm project has helped shape the MLA Digital Agriculture business plan. A need has been identified to further test AgTech which is market ready with producers in real world situations to identify the use cases and value propositions of the solutions beyond the simple demonstration of them. This is guiding the current and future MLA investments in this space.

Future research

• Improved methods for image cloud detection and data fusion across sensors.
• Development of pasture quality measures derived from rapid pasture assessment methods and remote sensing.
• Development of agricultural data standards to facilitate integration across technology platforms and businesses. National adoption of the MyFarmKey application will facilitate this through the creation of an authenticated digital farm record. The development of a national farm mapping platform would remove the single largest barrier to agtech adoption.
• Greater engagement of Producer Demonstration Sites in technology demonstrations coordinated through the MLA Digital Agriculture Team. This should also be coordinated through Agricultural Innovation Australia.