Smart farming is a management concept focused on providing the agricultural industry with the infrastructure to leverage advanced technology – including big data, the cloud and the internet of things (IoT) – for tracking, monitoring, automating and analysing operations.

The Australian Government’s Landcare Smart Farming Partnerships program has established pilot smart farms for vegetables and avocadoes at Austchilli in Bundaberg, Queensland.

Control Tower is an integrated sensor agnostic dashboard that allows users to see and manage information from various sensor brands to make decisions and pre-fill compliance forms for Freshcare Environmental.

Equipment installed and operating at the Austchilli pilot smart farm include trunk and stem dendrometers, sap flow sensors, soil moisture sensors, weather station, remote cameras, leachate collectors and runoff flumes.

Learn more at the Austchilli farm virtual field day:

From 1pm-3pm AEST on Thursday 26 May, Austchilli, Applied Horticultural Research (AHR), Hitachi Vantara and AUSVEG invite you to attend a virtual field day covering the AustChilli Smart Farm.

The online field day will feature live interviews with Austchilli staff, a demonstration of sensor integrations and activity tracking in Control Tower, an overview of the sensor suite installed at Austchilli, and a preview of automated Freshcare Environmental compliance forms.

In addition, AUVSVEG will give an update on the iMapPESTS project, Avocados Australia will give a project update, and Hort360 will present on Reef Certification.

The event will end with an open discussion, where questions from the audience are encouraged.

Program:

  • 1pm Pilot smart farm and technology overview – AHR
  • 1:20pm Control Tower dashboard – Hitachi
  • 1:40pm Farm update – Austchilli
  • 1:50pm iMapPESTS – AUSVEG
  • 2pm Avocados Australia
  • 2pm Reef Certification – Hort360
  • 2:20pm Freshcare Environmental
  • 2:30pm Open discussion forum

 

Funded through the Australian Government’s Landcare Smart Farming Partnerships program, the Digital remote monitoring to improve horticulture’s environmental performance (ST19024) project is managed by Hort Innovation.

The project involves collaborators including Hort Innovation, Applied Horticultural Research, Freshcare, Hitachi Consulting, Landcare and industry bodies Greenlife Industry Australia, AUSVEG, the Australian Banana Growers’ Council, the Australian Macadamia Society and Growcom.

Click here to register!