Getting data from across the farm, fast: How mobility can transform the products and experiences you deliver to customers.

1. FROM ACROSS
GETTING
THE FARM,
How mobility can transform the products and
experiences you deliver to customers
David Walker, Agri-Business Development Manager, Spark
DATA
FAST

2. The farmers and
growers that best
serve customers
are the ones that
can make decisions
in the shortest
possible time.

3. They’re using mobility and Internet
of Things (IoT) technologies to
automate previously manual processes
and drastically reduce response
times for critical operations.

4. To do this they collect
data from across the
farm that lets them
understand the state
of their operation
in real-time and
make more accurate
predictions about
where it is going.

5. Every entity that contributes to the
efficient and profitable operation of the
farm needs to be captured and saved.
That includes all kinds of measures — like
soil moisture, soil temperature, water levels,
weather conditions and so on — that take
the guesswork out of on-farm operations.

6. Being connected, and having greater access
to data and insights, can fundamentally
change the way your organisation operates.
Done well it can revolutionise the way
you serve your customers, capture market
opportunities, make business decisions and
become more environmentally sustainable.

7. With so many opportunities,
what’s holding back many
farmers from investing in new
mobility, cloud and Internet
of Things (IoT) technologies?
It’s often the very thing
that should be driving you
forward — connectivity.

8. In the past, many regions had problems
with connectivity issues.
You know the type of thing — patchy
mobile coverage, slow and intermittent
broadband speeds with limited
bandwidth and frequent outages.

9. A KPMG survey showed
connectivity was the second
priority for agribusiness leaders,
just behind biosecurity.

10. However, the
good news is that
we’re fast coming
to the end of
the town and
country divide.

11. The rollout of
new mobile
and broadband
services is putting
our rural regions
increasingly
on a par with
urban centres.

12. Investments by ICT providers will ensure that many
thousands of residents, farmers and businesses,
especially in smaller communities and rural
areas, have access to much better, faster and
affordable mobile and broadband services.
It’s giving our regions urban broadband
performance close to urban broadband pricing.

13. The improvements include:
4G rollouts nationwide
to improve mobile
speeds, latency and
energy efficiency.
Wireless broadband
that delivers 10x
faster speeds.
700Mhz spectrum to
make data connectivity
available where no
or slow fixed services
existed.
4G 700Mhz 10x

14. Regional initiatives, such as Spark’s
partnership with the Canterbury
Mayoral Forum to fast-track the
rollout of 4G and fast broadband
services across rural Canterbury.
The improvements include:
4G

15. Rural Broadband Initiative
(RBI) investments have:
Improved broadband
and mobile coverage
from 38% to 50%
of the country
Installed fibre
connectivity to 97%
of rural schools and
39 rural hospitals.
Increased mobile
coverage on state
highways from
67% to 77%
50% 77% 97%
Source: TUANZ

16. There’s more.
Mobile networks are in for a major boost with
5G — the next generation of mobile standards.
5G’s speeds, latency, reliability and improved
device battery life will make:
• Big data transfers simple and reliable
• Voice and video apps incredibly smooth
• Mobile and IoT apps more scalable.

17. Although commercial
deployments of 5G
are a few years away,
we’re already seeing
numerous use cases
that rely on its ultra-
reliable and very
fast communication.

18. Autonomous vehicles,
augmented reality,
drones, wearables
and digital assistants
are providing workers
with safe and
flexible tools to allow
better and more
timely decisions.

19. That means it’s less about how you’re
connected, whether wired or wireless, and
more about what you can do once you
have the bandwidth at your disposal.
So how will you take advantage
of these opportunities?

20. It’s the content
of the data
that will drive
the business
value for you.

21. The biggest
opportunity for our
primary sector is the
use of cloud, mobile
and IoT technologies
to capture, share
and view real-time
data from across the
farm and sector.

22. It will eliminate food wastage, ensure food quality and optimise
resource usage and inventories, adding value to what we
currently export and developing new solutions to best meet
customer needs.
It’s the one big requirement that we hear
about from everyone in the sector, from the
board members of our largest organisations,
through to my son on his Bluff oyster farm.

23. So how could this work? Here’s our vison for how
you can capture, share and view your data.
Capture
1 Devices and sensors
2 Hyper-connectivity
Share
3 Information exchange
4 Analytics
View 5 Visibility and insights

24. CAPTURE

25. CAPTURE
Devices and sensors
1
Start by collecting data from across your farm or operation using
remote sensors and mobile devices. Every entity contributing to
the efficient and profitable operation of your operation should
be captured and saved in on-farm management systems.

26. Hyper-connectivity
To link every device and sensor across your entire
operation, you’ll need multiple forms of cost-effective
communications technologies. Today we have 4G
LTE and WiFi, and are investigating new LPWA (Low
Power Wide Area) wireless technology to provide
you with comprehensive on-farm connectivity.
2
CAPTURE

27. SHARE

28. Information exchange
3
Once your on-farm data is available in back-office cloud apps,
you then need to manage and share it with your staff and
service providers. You can combine it with other publicly
available data sets to get a more comprehensive view of
customers, not just their activities related to your operation.
SHARE

29. 4
Analytics
Analytics will help you to cleanse and model the data.
This is where you will start to see the true value of
on-farm information – where information becomes
available for you to make positive decisions about
tactical operational changes and improvements.
SHARE

30. VIEW

31. Visibility and insights
5
Once you’ve established trust in the quality of your
on-farm information, visibility into patterns and trends becomes
available, and insights can then lead to decisions and actions
that have real material outcomes for your operation.
VIEW

32. Over time, you can move from descriptive
analytics (such as reporting, dashboards,
KPIs), to predictive analytics (predicting farm
machinery breakdowns or yield) and then
prescriptive analytics that answer the strategic
question: “What should I do for a desired
outcome that will better serve my customers?”

33. This all adds up to massive returns
for farmers and growers that
invest in mobility solutions.
How massive? Let’s look at one farm enhancing sustainability
and environmental quality while continuing to produce
high quality food: Waiuku dairy farmer Tony Walters.

34. Three years ago,
Tony and his wife
Marlene invested
in mobility
technologies on
their farm in Aka
Aka, Waiuku.

35. The Walters achieved cost savings
of $19,000 in the first year.
How? By shaving back $10,000 per year in
supplements and $9,000 in food wastage.
+19k

36. They’ve reduced feed from 15kg to
10.5kg to produce 1kg of milk solids.
15kg 10.5kg

37. And they’ve achieved 40 percent production
increase over 3 years after raising output from
80,000 to 110,000 milk solids from 250 cows.

38. This season, they are on target
for a whopping 60 percent
production increase by raising
output to 125,000 milk solids from
the same number of cows.

39. They use a variety
of mobile tools and
cloud apps:
On-farm sensors monitor the
environment to prove to the
regulatory authority they are
environmentally sustainable and
compliant with resource consents.

40. They use a variety
of mobile tools and
cloud apps:
Cow shed operating temperatures
and water use are automatically
recorded every 30 mins as food
safety procedures for Fonterra, with
alerts set to warn of any plant
failures that could spoil milk.

41. They use a variety
of mobile tools and
cloud apps:
ReGen’s farming tools record and
monitor rainfall, soil moisture and
soil temperature and help predict
grass growth, plan feed budgets
and decide when to apply fertiliser.

42. They use a variety
of mobile tools and
cloud apps:
Agri 360 stores data in the cloud for farm
record-keeping, compliance, health
and safety and job management.
Farm staff and consultants can analyse
activity in real-time as they are working
and it saves them having to manually
enter information each night.

43. Tony Walters, farmer, Waiuku
With wireless broadband we’re able to just
get on and do what we need to do, faster
than we ever have before. And now we
don’t worry about whether a thunderstorm
is passing through or whether we might
get a hefty bill in the mail, the service
is both reliable and affordable.

44. With a faster and more affordable internet
connection, we are able to take advantage
of the latest apps and online tools to
store and record on-farm information.
Tony Walters, farmer, Waiuku

45. So what have the Walters shown us?
It’s the ability to create a truly customer-centric
approach that provides the biggest opportunity
for people and businesses that make their living
from food, farming and the environment.
It will create more innovative, sustainable
and profitable businesses to lead
New Zealand’s economic transformation.

46. The bottom line? Mobility helps make
you and your team more productive,
and better equipped to make strategic
business decisions.
That means a more compliant and
environmentally sustainable operation,
better products and experiences for
your customers and more profit for you.

47. And the best
thing about it —
everything you need
to start collecting,
connecting and
sharing data from
across your farm is
available now.

48. If you’d like to know more about how mobility can
speed up decision-making on your farm, contact
your Spark Client Manager or give us a call on:
0800 694 364

49. For further articles, opinions and industry insights, see
sparkdigital.co.nz/insights or connect with David via LinkedIn.
For more insights into connectivity on the farm, see:
Move over smart cities: How the Internet of Things is taking
off on smart farms
David Walker, Agri-Business Development Manager, Spark