(IoT) technology set to have a deep impact on the productivity of New Zealand’s agricultural sector

New Zealand’s agricultural sector is bringing in efficient re-inventions with tech-driven innovations to make agriculture a profitable profession for its farmers.

A major study into the potential benefits of IoT last year in the country put forward the better use of IoT across agriculture that, could provide more than $570 million for the economy.

“An earlier study by the Sapere research group found that if New Zealand firms made better use of the internet it could have a major impact on GDP, potentially lifting it by $34 billion,” says New Zealand’s IoT alliance executive director, Mr.  Kriv Naicker.

The government, in collaboration with the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE), the Ministry for the Environment, and the New Zealand IoT Alliance is seeking information for a New Zealand arable farming IoT demonstration pilot project, to examine which technology can have the best impact on different sectors.

To ensure the actual benefits are identified for New Zealand, the pilot studies will be carried out in Canterbury and will be conducted by an independent research group for the agriculture sector.

Although, farmers have started to use technology, including IoT, to increase productivity and reduce costs to counter increased competition, the uptake of IoT in agriculture has been relatively low across the sector as a whole.

Naicker adds, “There is no dispute that using IoT systems to augment the intuition of the farmer will have a huge impact in terms of improving productivity on the farm and improving its environmental and sustainability performance.”

He concludes, “As technology makes its way onto the fields in the future, more farm management will be done from a desk or device instead of in the field.”