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 ] .........

Computer Systems Drive Modern Agriculture

Paul Wallbank an Australian commentator on technology joins Tony Delroy to discuss how technology affects your business and life.

This week we’re talking about how the agricultural industry is using smartphone apps and the web. A list of apps for farmers is available from the NSW Department of Primary Industry website.

We’ll also be looking at how machines are talking – in agriculture, the next generation of farm equipment will be sending data straight to the farmers’ tablet or laptop computer using the technologies we’re seeing in jet engines and other high tech equipment.

This was the topic last Thursday night [ 18 October 2012] and you can listen to the podcast or replay available off the Tony Delroy Nightlife show [ ABC radio]  http://www.abc.net.au/nightlife/ .

He seemed a bit surprised that stodgy old farmers [and many are older citizens] are actually fairly major users of technology in their business.

From phone apps related to fertiliser and crop prices, to RFID ear tags in animals to aid management, precision agriculture operations in grain growing, robotic operation tractors, drones [ yes - in use already in some places] to photograph and highlight areas in fields of disease, fertiliser deficiencies,, poor plant populations etc, not to mention monitoring rangelands, automated gates / drafting and animal medication and watering systems.  Then there are uses of google and satellite images for rangeland management, property management planning, use of weather radars on phones or in the farm office.  Plus the wide range of computer technology in equipment including spray rigs, seeders, harvesters [ often connected to other systems for precision agriculture and ultimately management of the next crop], grain dryers, moisture meters and many, many more.  Then there is the office - with networked computers, agricultural farm management software, modern accounting software and use of skype, email and webinars for training.

Agriculture is not necessarily a staid industry with straw chewing, slow talking hicks.  The modern farmer [meaning across a wide range of enteprises] is switched on to modern technology.

Sometimes though, they do not get the best of services in telecommunications to the rest of the world.