How Does Wireless Technology Increase Efficiencies and Sustainability?

Your team needs to balance the production of more food, fiber, and fuel with investments that simultaneously yield more crop per drop.

Thankfully, technology is changing the agricultural industry to make these initiatives easier and more affordable. Wireless innovations can ensure your water allocation is being distributed accurately. Remote monitoring technology is now at a price point that allows farmers to afford extensive monitoring systems.

World-changing technology isn’t exclusively saved for Silicon Valley.

Knowing the flow of nutrient application and actual soil nutrient needs will forever change how we farm

Now that high-tech sensors are faster and cheaper, society is able to mass-produce these in an economical way. Tracking technologies can exist in key points of a value chain to lay the groundwork for waste reduction and farm to fork transparency. Through the use of this technology, we are able to leverage the already incredibly safe food supply that we enjoy here in the US by allowing consumers to have more visibility into its quality and production. Wireless technology has allowed for more frequent monitoring, on a more granular level, in a much larger space, in areas that were once deemed inaccessible. This capture of data presents a great opportunity for the sustainability movement.

Sensors that monitor the movement of livestock can better help us understand grazing patterns. Wireless technologies allow insight into the heart rate and temperature of pigs, cattle, poultry, etc. We can treat sick animals or isolate them from the herd before diseases spread. In fact, tiny sensors are capable of tracking the movement of any animal – even insects. This could provide revolutionary insight for future pesticide use.

While wireless technology has existed for decades, WiFi and Bluetooth have a limited range and battery life. These systems have presented several use cases. However, the doors of change are now wide open with new commercial-grade access to Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN).

This new technology is capable of sending data across miles in a heavily-populated downtown area, which means this communication can cross ~20 miles in an open field. If a child was born and you purchased a LoRaWAN battery that same week, the battery wouldn’t expire until they reach the 4th grade. The battery life is 10 years.

The technology needed to feed the world already exists today — it’s just a matter of delivering that technology with the cost-effective and reliable connectivity needed to serve our growers and empowering them to use it however they see fit. This is what Ethos Connected is dedicated to doing. Opportunity and competitive edge belong to those who can meet at the crossroads of efficiency and sustainability.