Smart Agriculture and Precision Farming – A framework for Agricultural Companies, which want to produce more with less – The CoW-Tech Project
The considerable increase of the world population expected by 2030 has pushed the United Nations project on the reduction (and elimination) of world hunger (Global Goal # 2) to use technology for the optimization of cultivation techniques and breeding.
When new technologies like GPS, Drones, Sensors and Analytics are applied to agriculture, we are talking about Precision Agriculture.
This technology can be useful to produce more food with fewer resources (Producing More with less), obtaining an overall satisfaction for better sustainability (Protection and efficient use of resources and the environment), better productivity and better economic returns as a consequence.
For example, in the case of dairy cattle, a topic on which T.net Italy collaborates with the Department of Engineering Eletronics and Agriculture of the University of Catania, studies conducted on dairy cattle in intensive breeding have shown that the state of stress found in the animals leads to unusual behavior, a decline of their fertility and a worsening of the quality and quantity of the milk produced. The limited freedom of movement, fear, suffering, climate changes, possible plant malfunctions, high breeding density, mismanagement of litter, diseases and feeding errors, are the main stressors that can determine a state of malaise and suffering in animals and therefore a decrease in milk production.
Even not identifying in time the births of the pregnant animal or the state of heat, can lead to economic diseconomies and losses.
The CowTech Project, by putting together the LPWAN network infrastructure on LoRA technology, has enabled the monitoring of a large portion of the territory, in real time and with high expected results. In addition, the sensors that will be positioned on the animals will allow for a real-time monitoring of the health status of the farms.
The use of LoRA technology with the guaranteed wide coverage allows for the application of the technology developed for the prototype not only to dairy cows, but also for breeding for the production of meat in which the animals graze on very large territories and not necessarily in Italian contexts, but also European and International (USA, Argentna, Australia, Japan, etc).
CowTech, therefore, is a prototype of an automatic system based on a wireless network infrastructure and wearable sensors that allows for the monitoring of the behavior of dairy cows, aimed at improving well-being, production and reproductive performance. The motivations that reside in this objective can lead to an improvement in the profitability per head between 1,000 and 5,000 euro.
How can IOT technology help:
– Monitoring of foreign animals
– Monitoring of labor and all the phases that precede and follow the parts
– Monitoring of the health status of the animal in real time and in a proactive way.