One year on from the inaugural Mobile Tech in Primary Industries Conference in Wellington, Jono and myself took the trip to Auckland to see how the big trends of mobile technology have developed since 2013. Over two days, we saw a wide range of case studies looking at how businesses in the farming, forestry, and horticulture sectors are harnessing the power of tech mobility to improve productivity and efficiency. Jono blogged themes emerging from the 2013 Mobile Tech Conference, here is how we saw the themes develop one year on.
A big theme last year was even bigger in 2014 with many more applied examples of using sensing technology in the field to increase business impact.
Dr Michael Fielding from Callaghan Innovation opened, with what would be the one of the big focus points of this year's conference: the personalisation of data. Data is becoming increasingly more specific, and users across industry are harnessing the power of sensors for localised information, algorithm based decision making and infinite personalisation. "Hunches are no longer enough, data needs to be more specific".
This was most evident from Agri Optic's Craige Mackenzie, who specialises in precision agriculture on arable land. The application of localised sensors across farms has had a huge impact on efficiency, removing the need for guess work and blanket application of product across land. Using sensors that create electromagnetic soil maps, yield maps, soil moisture data, and localised weather predictions, Craige is able to control variable rate application of fertilisers and irrigation to specific zones on his farms. This new technology gives powerful information to the farmer and is allowing farms to be more profitable while limiting their environmental impact.
Ivan Adonovich added to the advancement in sensing on a more intimate level, with his Scottish company Silent Herdsman teleconferenced in from Glasgow. Smart collars on cows are monitoring activity patterns of single cows to entire herds. AlI software imbedded on the collar interprets the data through accelerometer algorithms and streams it back to the farmer so they have real time updates on animal welfare. He highlighted that sensor systems like his own were able to give farmers early indications about changes and patterns on the farm, and allows them to act quickly. More informed decisions can come from marrying rich data streams to create current and predictive analytics.
Dr Benita Vincent from CSIRO shared her involvement with sensor networks on the micro scale, tracking bees with micro sensors. Utilising a 1mm2 RFID platform, her research team were creating "bees with backpacks" to understand the global colony collapse disorder and how it may affect the $47B honey and pollination industry worldwide. Tracking bee's individual behaviour may sound like a painstaking task, but the research was showing some astounding results with swarm behaviour, flight patterns, and colony interactions. Through tracking and sensing, the research is able to model the behaviour of bees to see how they react to changes in the environment.
The biggest challenge mobile tech faces in rural locations remains connectivity, and as Craige Mackenzie put it aptly, "it's crazy how a company with a $30M turnover just out of Christchurch does not have any high speed broadband connectivity". With smart phones being adopted readily by farmers (70% iOS stated by Xero), Andrew Button from Mobile Mentor and Shane Murphy from Kore Wireless showed the need for applications and sensors to provide uninhibited offline capabilities or utilise satellite connections. The Kore Wireless Machine-to-Machine (M2M) leverages satellite connectivity to data transfer between devices - a potential enabler in rural locations when line of sight is unachievable.
Stemming from M2M, the "Internet of Things" (IoT) entered the paddock this year as a hot topic, with Spark Digital demonstrating how to connect more customers with applications such as ThingWorx. Increasingly, IoT means that people are consuming products as services, which can make it difficult to create a business case. According to Gartner, IoT has overtaken Big Data in the technology value perception stakes.
Extending the connectivity out into the farm for real time updates is where Fonterra's Carla McQueen took the Fencepost Mobile App, an app to deliver production and farm quality information to the mobile. Tackling 14 years of legacy systems to create something ubiquitously mobile was just the first challenge before getting out on the farm. Working with farmers to create timely in-paddock decisions was key to helping lead to an agile solution with the help of Optimal Experience (Co-Founder Trent Mankelow spoke recently at the Innovation Forum) . Experiencing life on the farm, they looked at what information was key by mapping the customer journey and identifying their core needs. These insights turned into a simple application for farmers to see real time updates of their farm, whether they were onsite or not.
Xero is also marching forward with its plans to give more farmers time on the land with integrating their accounting packages into industry specific apps. Plugging Xero into many agricultural management apps such as Fencepost means that Xero can automatically manage and adjust accounting based on the decisions being made on the farm through other applications. Taking accounting to the cloud is removing the need for IT assets while still allowing farmers to own their data. Last year 30% of NZ GDP was processed through Xero with a 1/4 of all NZ business on the system. 70% of this revenue was exports. In two years the time to be invoiced (important for farming) was reduced to 31 days from 43.
Turning data and capabilities mobile in primary industries that have been traditionally slow to adapt, such as forestry, can be a big problem said Bryan Graham, from SCION (a long running project partner with Locus). In an industry such as forestry, there are a number of companies across the value chain that need to share data collected at the forest floor. This means that investment in sensors needs to carry across the value chain with an easy flow of data. Scanning a tree's individual genetic information and passing that through the value chain means a specific picture of a piece of wood can be easily created. Forestry faced an even bigger connectivity problem with traditional means of data transfer being restricted by the forest canopy. Connectivity to LiDAR, UAVs, and cellular is a great challenge.
UAVs (Drones, Quadcopters) UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) or Drones featured in almost every presenter's slide-deck. Compared to last year, UAV technology has found more useful applications and increasingly being seen as a tool, rather than a toy. Linda Bulk from Aeronavics (previously Droidworx) showed all kinds of uses for the drones they are providing, including thermal imaging, damage assessment, environmental surveys, precision spraying, and livestock monitoring.
GPS IT's Matt Flowerday showed off one of the most practical examples of UAVs in industry to date, using them for mapping kiwifruit orchards for Zespri and orchard owners. Coupling GPS and GIS data from UAVs means GPS IT has quickly gone from pen and paper recording to a fully digital survey and mapping service. Throughout the PSA outbreak, they were able to map every orchard affected and the proximity of the disease to non-infected orchards. They have the ability to record orchard varieties, sizes, the number of plants per hectare, and near infra-red and LiDAR imaging are used to detect the digital signatures of individual plants and fruit for auditing and orchard volume maps. One of the challenges they still face with UAVs is line of site, requiring a pilot and a spotter for safety.
Big Data Big data applications picked up the pace at this year's conference with a number of mentions. With Big Data comes the 3 Vs: Volume, Variety and Velocity - see this from Gartner who coined the explanation if you're still in the dark.
Robert Gibb from Landcare Research took us through a research project to build a national infrastructure around satellite data for primary industry applications. Calibrating measurements of surface colour, the new discrete global grid system synchronises images over the last 15 years and allows users to track land changes (e.g. water coverage) through satellite imagery over time. The sheer size of the satellite data collected lacked structure and led Landcare Research to change its approach to data analysis. The framework allows addition of all imagery from a range of satellites and helps people to add their own images to the archive automatically to help build the 3D globe.
Bryan Graham from Scion also introduced Value into the Venn diagram - the need to create more value from the Big Data sets. Xero also mentioned the possibilities in the accounting sector.
With the customer at the heart of any end product, many companies are beginning to realise the importance of a user centred design approach. Xero and Fonterra are both getting out of the office, on to farms, observing and talking to farmers/customers to get real insights on what they need on the farm. Understanding the customer was emphasised no better than by St John Craner from Tracta. Tech means different things to different people, and to get farmers to adopt technology means deeply understanding them, their land, and their decision making process. Farmers believe farmers, so getting early adopters on board with your product will help you influence mainstream farmers. The most important points St John raised was that farmers are highly emotional people. To get farmers on board, you must sell from a position of trust, which is not easily gained where technology is seen as way to expose them. Using the front of curve farmers can help you earn trust using testimonials as reliable reference points. As always, you have to trial, and take it one district, one driveway at a time.
St John gave us 5 key factors for Tech adoption:
Mobile Tech for 2014 saw a real focus on understanding users and applying technology to aid decision making. Aiding users to respond to changes to environment quickly through sensors, UAVs, and in-situ apps is increasing efficiency across industry. There was a big shift from blanket operations to precision, using localised and zonal information to for more individual responses to events such as weather, pastoral applications and animal welfare. Altogether, industry is begging to apply mobile tech for real bottom line productivity and making sure usability is at its forefront.
Image Source: CSIRO
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