®
21
END
OF
YEAR
REPORT
2020
Approved
for
distribution
outside
of
the
LoRa
Alliance
®
®
WHITE PAPERS PUBLISHED IN 2020
AGRICULTURE
How to make the right connection for
precision agriculture READ NOW >
BUILDINGS
Why LoRaWAN
®
is the foundation for
Smart Building success READ NOW >
www.lora-alliance.org
HOW TO MAKE
THE RIGHT
CONNECTION
FOR PRECISION
AGRICULTURE
INTRODUCTION
The growing global population coupled with increased
awareness of the demands agriculture places on the
environment is putting farmers under intense pressure.
They're required to maximize yields to feed more
people while simultaneously ensuring their practices are
sustainable. In addition, consumers demand cheap food,
necessitating greater automation to preserve margins.
There is a need to find a balance between intensive
production and respect for nature and this cannot be
achieved within the confines of traditional farming.
Harnessing technology to enable smart agriculture has
emerged to provide farmers with the tools they need to
serve a 30% larger population in the future in a sustainable
way that is in harmony with nature. Within smart agriculture,
there are two main industries: crop production, which
includes arable, orchard and vegetable farming, and animal
husbandry. These have distinct requirements. This paper
focuses on crop production exclusively.
To maximize production, resources need to be utilized
effectively and, for many farms, this starts with ensuring soil
quality is optimized and water is not wasted. Projections
show that one-third of the world is set to be living in water
stress and, with agriculture consuming up to 80% of the
water in some countries while as much as 60% of water
withdrawn for irrigation often does not reach the crop
1
, the
situation must change urgently.
Water and nutrient levels, therefore, need to be managed
for farms to be successful but traditional approaches of
irrigation and fertilizing according to seasonal or crop-
based cycles are imprecise, relying on season-wide
averaging and insights gleaned retrospectively from
crop yields. In contrast, a soil monitoring system can
enable water consumption to be reduced by around 20%,
according to real experiences from current deployments.
Soil data is subject to variations in climate from year-to-
year and to anomalies such as extreme weather or pest
epidemics, so analyzing historical data doesn't provide all
the benefits to farmers. More timely – and often real-time –
information is required to enable farmers to react swiftly to
changes in nutrient or moisture levels. Being able to irrigate
when soil is too dry has obvious benefits in terms of yield
size, but the same system can also advise that irrigation
is not necessary when soil is at the right moisture level,
thereby saving water.
Similarly, it's of no benefit to add nutrients to soil that
already has reached the required level. However, to
achieve this minimized usage of resources for maximized
crop production requires far more granular detail than has
previously been available. Data needs to be collected upon
not on a farm-by-farm basis but on a field-by-field basis.
Ideally, data collection should be even more granular,
enabling insights into soil conditions in areas of fields
in real-time so farmers can respond rapidly to clearly-
presented data via mobile device applications.
LoRa Alliance
®
and LoRaWAN
®
are registered trademarks. Used with permission. ©2020 LoRa Alliance
®
M AY 2 0 2 0
THE FARMING OF
TOMORROW IS ALREADY
HERE: HOW LoRaWAN
®
TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTS
SMART AGRICULTURE
& PRECISE ANIMAL
PRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Recent extreme incidents around the globe—famine,
climate change, wildfires, tornados, droughts, floods, and
pandemics—remind us that farmers are facing two major
challenges: to feed the planet and sustain the environment.
The balance between conducting intensive or extensive
from farm to fork. With approximately 1.5 million cattle
and nearly 978 million pigs being bred around the world
(source: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QA), these
complex demands cannot be met without the help of new
technologies, such as the Internet-of-Things (IoT).
Here are a few examples of the wide variety of use
cases implemented today:
N O V E M B E R 2 0 2 0
www.lora-alliance.org
WHY LoRaWAN
®
IS
THE FOUNDATION
FOR SMART
BUILDING SUCCESS
INTRODUCTION
Smart buildings present an obvious sector of the market
in which Internet of Things (IoT) enabled services can
applications to generate savings in utility consumption
but this is now widening to encompass applications that
support the new ways that people use the buildings they
live and work in. Popular applications include room and
desk sharing, individual environmental control, predictive
maintenance and many others.
Costs associated with traditional workplaces have typically
JLL which outlines operating costs of US$3 for utilities,
US$30 for rent and US$300 for employee compensation
per square foot. Naturally, the actual cost of this varies from
market-to-market but the ratio generally holds true. The
employee compensation and that utility costs are the only
area with room for maneuver. Historically, these are the
easy wins with IoT-enabled sensors and meters being used
to monitor and manage power, heat, cooling and lighting-
However, organizations are now starting to realize that
having a smart building means much more than making
small adjustments to energy and water consumption.
Smart building initiatives now form part of organizations'
sustainability and employee recruitment and retention
programs and, with millennials who are used to automation
and expect attractive work environments, the role of smart
building applications will become of greater importance. For
organizations to attract younger generations of workers,
work locations, they will need to offer workspaces that
attract them to come in and spend time there. Applications
that enable the smooth sharing of desk space, enable
individualized environmental and other controls and are
maintained to a high standard of cleanliness and décor will
be vital.
Even so, buildings themselves remain unsmart. New
buildings continue to be constructed with no reference
to enablement of smart building applications forcing
past, this had caused substantial challenges in terms
of installing hardware, power supplies and connectivity
ultimately making it both time and cost prohibitive. From a
building owners' perspective, being able to swiftly and cost
effectively add new functionality to existing real estate and
thereby increase its value is a key driver. The ability to add
such capability at a low cost and with minimal disruption to
Low power devices with wireless connectivity therefore
look particularly attractive for building tenants and owners
but there is a bewildering and growing list of technological
options that claim to offer this functionality for customers
LoRa Alliance
®
and LoRaWAN
®
are registered trademarks. Used with permission. ©2020 LoRa Alliance
®
M AY 2 0 2 0
The farming of tomorrow is already here: How
LoRaWAN
®
technology supports Smart Agriculture
& Precise Animal Production READ NOW >
