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Precision Agriculture and IoT — Legacy Archive

Make connected data useful in the field

This page preserves the former Precision Agriculture and IoT Center of Excellence for historical reference. The materials below document its prior charter, focus areas and operating model. For current participation opportunities, explore the active Centers of Excellence.

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At-a-Glance

The former Precision Agriculture and IoT CoE brought AgriTech practitioners and technology leaders together to share best practices and open, repeatable approaches to efficient, sustainable farming.

Why Now

Food security, climate and water pressure, labour and input costs, and traceability raised the need for practical ways to stabilise yield while using less water, fertiliser, chemicals and energy.

Executive Summary

This practitioner forum connected growers, agronomists, cooperatives, processors, logistics and technology teams. Its archived outputs include reference architectures, playbooks, evaluation suites and audit evidence for yield, input efficiency, resilience and farm-to-fork traceability.

Who We Serve

  • Field: crop, orchard, vineyard, livestock, dairy and greenhouse producers; agronomists and advisers.
  • Operations: processors, cooperatives/FPOs, grain handlers, cold chain and logistics.
  • Technology: farm platforms, edge/IoT, remote sensing, CV and ML teams.
  • Risk and leadership: ESG/MRV, insurance, lending, food safety, owners and boards, OEMs, integrators, standards bodies, research and extension.

Charter & Objectives

Six objectives shaped the charter: improve yield stability and grade; use less water, fertiliser, chemicals and irrigation/CEA energy; anticipate heat, frost, drought, pests and disease; document lot lineage, residue controls and audit evidence; protect producer data through consent and fair value exchange; and publish playbooks usable across farm sizes.

Scope

The scope covered satellite/drone and in-field soil, weather and canopy sensing; machine telemetry; variable-rate planting and spraying; irrigation/fertigation and CEA control; livestock, post-harvest and cold-chain monitoring; agronomic models; soil/carbon MRV; and farm data governance.

Focus Pillars

  1. Robotics and automation: planting, weeding, spraying, harvest assist, packhouse AGVs, auto-steer and section control. Outputs: safe task plans, prescription-linked as-applied logs and maintenance triggers.
  2. AI: CV for disease, weeds, pests and fruit estimates; yield, demand and energy forecasts; irrigation and routing optimisation. Outputs: labelled data, precision/recall and drift checks, action thresholds.
  3. Digital platforms: event streams, lakehouse, features, model registry and simulation. Outputs: lineage, data contracts, versioned models, reproducible builds and freshness/completeness SLOs.
  4. Sustainable farming: variable-rate input and water budgets, soil/carbon MRV, residue and biodiversity measures. Outputs: verified application maps, water/energy KPIs and evidence packs.
  5. Indoor farming: temperature, humidity, CO₂, light, substrate, fertigation, IPM and HVAC control. Outputs: target bands, alarms, energy-per-kg dashboards and batch genealogy.

Reference Architecture

  • Devices: soil, weather, canopy, livestock, machine CAN/ISOBUS and CEA sensors, with secure identity where possible.
  • Connectivity: LoRaWAN/NB-IoT/LTE-M, Wi-Fi, 4G/5G and satellite/NTN, segmented by service level.
  • Edge: ISOBUS/MQTT/OPC UA adapters, time sync, local rules, buffering, quality checks, redaction and offline operation.
  • Data: streams, time-series, lakehouse, feature/model stores, lineage and consent registry.
  • Applications: agronomy decisions, VRA, irrigation/CEA control, equipment, logistics, cold chain, traceability and MRV.
  • Controls: producer data rights, policy-as-code, human approval, rollback and audit evidence.

Historical Cadence & Calendar

Historically, the program model used monthly working sessions, quarterly showcases and IoT Slam-aligned seasonal clinics. This is not a current schedule.

Historical Participation Model

Former roles included members, contributors, workstream leads and chair/steering. These archived roles are not currently open positions.

Archive Status

This CoE is a legacy archive. For current participation, visit the active Centers of Excellence or describe your interest on the Join Us page.

Download CoE Overview

Precision Agriculture IoT CoE overview (PDF)

A question worth exploring

What information can a grower use, when is it needed, and how can a connected system deliver it reliably under field conditions?

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