The agriculture and farming industry has embraced a major transformation with the new era of “Smart Technology” that is designed to help improve efficiency using telematics and GPS tracking technology. “Smart Technology” refers to operating farms by utilizing modern information and communication technologies to improve the quantity and quality of crops.
Agriculture has seen a big demand for optimization through smart technology under the pressure of climate change, fluctuating commodity prices, rising interest rates, growing population, and labor issues.
Telematics and GPS provide agricultural workers & managers with transparent data on fields, crops, and their processing. Having specific information and insight on hand users can effectively plan and improve agribusiness processes as well as driver further efficiencies.
Let’s explore how Smart Technology can transform agricultural operations.
How Smart Technology Can Help Improve Precision Farming
Leveraging telematics and GPS can help to increase efficiency. The followings are major areas that can drive cost savings and increase productivity for the business:
- Increase Productivity
Managing farm vehicles & equipment can be cumbersome, and it is difficult to get an immediate and real-time snap shop of your fleet. Smart Technology solves this problem by providing simple and easy-to-use tools for more effective management.
GPS tracking & fleet management software provide real-time insights into the whereabouts and activities of your vehicles. It easily identifies what is in use or not, as well as a history of previous activity. This helps further by enabling you to assign the appropriate asset to the right crop and ensure you maximize that asset’s utilization.
- Protect Valuable Assets
Not knowing the whereabouts of your vehicles has its own inherent opportunity costs, but could also mean a lost or missing asset, which comes at a much bigger cost to the company (as well as additional downtime).
GPS Tracking/Telematics assures that you have your finger on the pulse. You can easily identify unauthorized use as well as receive real-time notifications which are fully configurable. You can take immediate action and prevent unexpected losses.
- Managing Crop Rotation
Geofencing provides an invaluable tool for cultivation, fertilization, and harvesting (a Geofence is a virtual boundary that you can draw around key areas/fields). This will provide accurate data on the integration of your equipment with these fields or areas.
By assigning fields within the telematics software, you can manage and assign work scheduled on these fields. Easily identify when certain work has begun, what percentage has been completed or missed, even at what speed was each pass completed.
In addition, geofencing can be used for fencing off regions that need to be left alone for cultivation. Isolating land can help farmers notify unwelcoming invaders, such as animals to prevent accidents or injury to humans and livestock.
This will also provide a historic view of interactions and previous cultivations completed within your various fields.
- Improved Routes
Using inefficient routes means increased costs, and GPS tracking helps eliminate the guesswork when it comes to navigation. Optimization of a route means decreased fuel consumption, reduce wear & tear, and reduces labor costs.
- Dashboard & Reports
Gain insight by leveraging dashboards and reports regarding cultivated fields, overlaps and omissions, fuel consumption, mileage, speed, and other key parameters. Users can gain valuable time by easily reviewing daily detailed information on completed works, and leverage this within accounting as well. Reports allow you to not only control all types of work but also assess their quality and improve the agricultural processes of your enterprise.
Future outlook of the agriculture industry with Smart Technology
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report, farmers will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world’s expected population of 9 Billion. With growing demand, technology will certainly play a huge role in meeting these needs.
Thanks to today’s technologies, farmers can produce even greater output without unnecessary effort.
By integrating telematics with a fleet management system, you can better control fieldwork based on telematics data. Astreon provides an Agriculture GPS solution that delivers transparent data about crop rotations and field operations to your business. By empowering farmers with this key information, you can better plan and improve your agribusiness processes, as well as make better decisions with greater insight.
For more information about our Agricultural GPS Solution, please contact us today!
