Goanna Ag’s low-cost sensors and connectivity to optimise water management across Romani Pastoral Co Redbank station and significantly improve on-farm efficiencies
| Publication date: | 29 June 2022 |
| Project status: | Completed |
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Summary
Digital farms are important for the longevity of Australian red meat supply chains, whether that be to inform consumers of our credentials (CN30 and Beef Sustainability initiative) or to improve business productivity. This project is the second digital farm to be rolled out and will focus on installation requirements, farm user experience and quantifying the return on investment. This component partnered with Goanna Ag to install two LoRaWAN network gateways at Romani Pastoral Redbank station to provide whole of farm connectivity. This connectivity was utilised for Goanna Ag’s own IoT sensor network that was installed at Redbank station and also other third party IoT suppliers that participated in the Digital Farm and installed other IoT sensors.
Objectives
This project aimed to install two solar powered LoRaWAN networks at Romani Pastoral Redbank station to provide whole of farm connectivity and utilise this to install a IoT sensor network to assist with monitoring of assets across the property. This included supplying, installing and making operational the following digital components:
1. 2 Solar powered, LoRaWAN base stations
2. 10 Water trough sensors;
3. 4 Water tank sensors;
4. 3 Weather stations;
5. 3 Rain gauges;
6. 4 Water flow monitoring sensors; and
7. 3 Soil probes
Will have trained and acquired sign-off from Carwoola Pastoral Company’s General Manager and MLA.
Key findings
Operation of the LoRaWAN network has been faultless since installation and the Goanna Ag sensor solutions have also operated at a high level of availability, with only a few days of interruption over the initial 6-month period. Provision of network connectivity to 3rd party suppliers was a requirement of the project. This process proved to be more complex on the Redbank installation due to varying degrees of implementation of the LoRaWAN standard, combined with use of the National Narrowband Network (NNNCo) to manage users and traffic of the network, which introduced complexity to working relationships. All issues have now been resolved with all sensor providers, with the exception of one.
Benefits to industry
Digital AgTech providers often make fictious 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. This component assessed the suitability of a LoRaWAN network to simultaneously provide connectivity to a range of third party IoT sensors to reduce the number of competing network installations across a property thereby reducing costs and initial capital outlay.
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
Whilst IoT devices will bring significant value pre-farm gate, the maturity of the IoT eco-system and connectivity systems need further refining and agreement on a standard to ensure one type of network infrastructure can support a broad range of solution providers. The current approach for providers to supply their own network installation will make the technology either too complex or too expensive for most producers to engage with.
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For more information Contact Project Manager: John McGuren |
