IT’S COMING in from above. The National Broadband Network’s Sky Muster satellite is circling the skies to beam internet access with business-and-precision-agriculture-friendly download speeds of 25 megabits per second by the end of April.
A second satellite is set to launch before the end of the year. Then, each Sky Muster will service 200,000 rural and remote homes and businesses.
To date, most of regional NSW had no option but to watch as metropolitan Australia tapped into the wonders of the web. Demand to modernise is palpable, no more so than in the farm sector.
Just about all of the 112 submissions to the Senate inquiry into boosting ag productivity with technology highlighted the desperate need to get the bush online.
One of them, from the Grains Research and Development Corporation said “lack of reliable access to internet and mobile coverage is one of the most restrictive elements in preventing the wider uptake and adoption of existing and emerging technologies in Australian agriculture… (there is) dire need for better and more reliable regional and remote internet and mobile access”.
GRDC chairman Richard Clark said growers’ machinery and equipment will soon need to communicate with each other and a data collection point at the homestead to keep the pace of technology development.
“Most farms in 10 years time will have a weather station connected to their tractor and implements which could adjust for seed depth and fertiliser rates according to measurements from a live data feed.”
Field sensors dotted across a property would be next on the cards, to monitor plant health, soil moisture and other useful metrics. Similar scenarios could play out in the pastures of livestock producers, where ear tags relay information on animal health.
The US Studies Centre’s Andrea Koch, who heads the soil Carbon initiative at University of Sydney said while Australian agriculture leads its American competitors in technology take-up the Yankees are ahead in figuring out how to capitalise on the data delivered by on farm connectivity.
“The biggest barrier to the adoption of emerging technology in agriculture, will be broadband and telecommunications capacity across rural Australia, and in particular, upload capacity,” she said.
Innovation will follow when farmers finally get online, but if sufficient internet connections don’t come to the bush progress will stall, she said.
Grain Growers Limited will hold information sessions in the lead up to Sky Muster services launch, run from late April into early June across Queensland, NSW and Victoria.
Visit www.graingrowers.com.au for more information.
