Next Farming

The German company FarmFacts GmbH has been active in the development of agricultural software solutions for over 30 years. Under its label NEXT Farming, the company is selling various digital products that support farmers in optimizing their business processes and at the same time fulfill legal regulations. Whether fertilization requirement determination, nutrient comparisons, sub-area management, cultivation planning, herd management, financial accounting, the administration of weather data or harvest and cost planning: the repertoire for agriculture is huge.

However, FarmFacts does not only focus on software management: The company wants to prepare agriculture for the challenges of the future and climate change with sophisticated sensors for yield monitoring.

The 1NCE IoT Lifetime Flat is an essential component.

Background

Changing climatic conditions present new challenges for agriculture worldwide and of course in Germany as well. A lack of rain or extreme weather conditions have caused yield losses in recent years. It becomes more crucial to have a better overview of weather conditions, rainfall levels or the current soil moisture on site at any time. Farmers not only need to know where exactly it is currently dry, but also how much additional water needs to be applied by sprinkler systems to prevent the harvest from being jeopardized. At the same time, it is important to save resources and thus costs. In order to be able to plan and work more efficiently, FarmFacts provides a whole series of networked weather stations, which send their data live to a web-based portal or mobile app.

Challenge

The NEXT weather stations aim to help farmers to manage their land in a way that looks ahead and saves resources and time. The stations are intended to support farmers by providing the necessary data they need for the optimal supply of their fields. They measure rainfall, wind speeds, humidity, air and soil temperatures as well as other essential information. The weather stations are being placed directly in the field to be monitored. Power is supplied by built-in rechargeable batteries and a solar panel. Since a data connection usually cannot be established remotely without an own local wide area network that comes with additional expensive costs for installation and hardware, SIM cards are integrated in the station for communication via cellular mobile networks. But this usually involves additional costs for the mobile connection of their products, which are difficult for FarmFacts to calculate. Costs that unnecessarily complicate the product, make it more expensive and therefore less attractive for customers.

1NCE Solution

The 1NCE IoT Lifetime Flat has proved to be the perfect solution for the NEXT Farming product range. A transparent pre-paid cost model that allows yearlong planning. In addition, area-wide national and international accessibility in over 100 countries via various networks using 2G, 3G, 4G or NB-IoT. In addition, the mobile communication of the sensor data is extremely energy-saving and can be realized with the built-in rechargeable battery and the solar power supply of the weather stations self-sufficiently and for years.