Digital Livestock 4.0 2019/2020 Pilot Farmbot Romani Digital Farm Water Sensing Deployment Trial

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. The purpose of this component is to provide digital solutions to Romani Pastoral Company, specifically to provide water tank and trough monitoring using satellite connectivity. In doing so, Farmbot sought to demonstrate satellite solutions for monitoring tank and trough allows water monitoring solutions to be deployed across all areas of Australia.

Objectives

The overall objective of the project was to provide Romani Pastoral - Windy Station with water tank and water trough monitoring solutions enabled by satellite connectivity. Specifically, Farmbot were to supply, install, and make operational the following digital components:

• one water tank sensor;
• three wireless water trough sensors; and
• one rain gauge.

Key findings

The project successfully demonstrated to producers that remote monitoring in areas where traditional connectivity is limited or non-existent is now commercially viable and most importantly reliable.
• Satellite communications enabled monitoring is a reliable and commercially viable reality.
• The development of the wireless trough sensor was a success and resulted in a commercial product.
• The Farmbot wireless sensor ecosystem concept was validated.

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. The benefit of this project is the demonstration to producers that remote monitoring in areas where traditional connectivity is limited or non-existent is now commercially viable and, most importantly, reliable. The development of the wireless trough sensor provides producers with another option for trough monitoring solution, specifically targeting remote locations.

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

Future research and development should be focused on expanding the wireless sensor ecosystem. In particular, water quality and animal tracking. Additional research in data analytics of the collected data, to explore water consumption and animal health, is also of significant interest.