Sensors and Big Data Provide Farmers With Decision-Making Support

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

One of the obstacles to e-agriculture in Brazil is lack of connectivity in rural areas. “Insufficient connectivity in the countryside hinders technological progress in agribusiness. Vast areas of Brazil have no signal at all. In Mato Grosso State, for example, which is a major soybean producer, you can travel 400 km without being able to use a cell phone. Here in São Paulo State, network coverage misses out areas within 36 km of important cities,” said Carlos Lorena Neto, an engineer at CPqD, an information and communications technology (ICT) company, during his presentation.

“Telcos aren’t interested in putting up antennas in rural areas. It isn’t profitable for them to invest in network coverage there. But other networking solutions are available to farmers,” he told Agência FAPESP.

In his presentation to the workshop, Lorena Neto described an Internet of Things project implemented at São Martinho, a leading player in the Brazilian sugar and energy industry. Located in the municipality of Pradópolis, São Paulo State, the group’s rural properties produce 10 million metric tons of sugarcane per year in an area with a radius of 84 km, mostly without cellular network coverage.

With financing from BNDES, the national development bank, under the Plan for Joint Support for Agricultural Technology Innovation in the Sugar & Energy Industry (PAISS Agrícola), the project included development of an integrated broadband mobile communications and remote sensing platform to enable applications such as real-time control of farm implements and sugarcane traceability during harvesting and processing.

“We designed a base station similar to those used by telcos, except that it operates at a different frequency to ensure better propagation so that the radio signal goes further. The base station is connected to sensors [which monitor the location and functioning of the sugar mill’s machines] that send the data to this network,” he explained.

Smart cows

Lenira El Faro Zadra, a researcher at the Animal Husbandry Institute of the São Paulo State Agribusiness Technology (APTA), presented the state of the art in wearable and remote sensor systems for animal health, applied in this case to dairy cattle herds. Multiple variables such as feed consumption, temperature, hoof and udder health, milk composition, and methane emissions can be monitored using wearable sensors and remote sensors fitted to equipment at different places on the farm.

“A specific sensor made by an Austrian company to monitor the movement and temperature of cows with very high milk production is available on the market,” Zadra said. “It’s inserted via the esophagus into the cow’s reticulorumen and measures the animal’s temperature every ten minutes.”

Using the data collected, the cow management system detects not just heat stress or the occurrence of fever due to infection, but above all the temperature variations associated with the reproductive process. “Temperature rises during estrus, about 24 hours before mount acceptance, and falls prior to calving,” Zadra said.

The cylindrical sensor is 13 cm long and 2-3 cm in diameter. It can store data for 50 days, downloading when the animal approaches the base station. Its battery lasts four years.

The same company also makes a sensor to monitor changes in ruminal pH due to diet. This device can operate for 150 days. It enables the farmer to be sure the cow is coping well with the special diet administered to support very high milk production in terms of digestive tract acidity. Neither sensor can be removed from the animal.

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