Precision Pastoral Enterprises - Remote Sensing Plus!

This project is a serious attempt by Australian researchers to develop remote sensing technology that will dramatically improve knowledge and understanding and bring quantitative data to remote pastoral enterprises in Australia.......and maybe before too long to elsewhere around the world.

This is advertising a field day at remote Glenforrie station some 400 kms S of Karratha in the middle of WA.  The technology will be discussed and demonstrated.  Yes, it works!


This is a promo for the event........

The revolutionary Australian technology that combines pasture monitoring from space with automated mustering and weighing of cattle will go on full public show for the first time this month. The Precision Pastoral Management Systems (PPMS) package saves labour, time and money, improves livestock productivity, increases sustainability and protects vegetation and wildlife in Australia’s – and potentially the world’s – arid rangelands and savannas. The full package will be demonstrated publicly for the first time at a field day at Glenflorrie Station in the remote WA Pilbara on 28 October. Principal Research Leader Sally Leigo, of the NT Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, says: “PPMS is an integrated package of tools and technologies that automate the management of livestock remotely, muster and draft animals automatically, report on pasture condition and carrying capacity, reduce the pastoral workload and help to balance livestock numbers with feed availability to avoid overgrazing. “It’s a game-changer for rangelands grazing because, for the first time, it puts hard data on cattle liveweights and feed availability in the hands of the manager, while reducing costs, lifting earnings and sustaining the pastoral landscape.”  The technology was developed exclusively in Australia, with trials over several years on five real working Australian cattle stations and with full support from the pastoral grazing industry. “This end-user engagement ensures a product that graziers and pastoralists want and need, leading to a ready domestic market for the technology,” Sally says.

Details of the field day here.  While Australia has been a leader in developing RFID technology for tagging cattle and more recently sheep, that technology was initially driven by biosecurity issues but it was not very long before it was realised that the data which could be gained had real world uses for property and herd  management. Then a simple metering device for adding nutrients to water at water points points in pastoral lands was developed. More R and D........to bring this to where it is today. More to come as well, when you add the known technology in the wings now [ or even on the wings ] .........