Farm WiFi

An Australian farmer has installed an Internet network across his property to better connect his business remotely.

10:29 28 April 2017

Darrin Lee, a farmer from Western Australia, is the first farmer to install intranet network across his 6500-hectare property where he and his family grow about 4400ha of crops and run 3500 sheep. The farm network solution was designed by Origo and has been installed at Bligh Lee Farms.

 

This isn’t the first time that Mr Lee has invested in technology. He used drones for crops and paddock inspection tasks five years ago. However, he found that the use of the machine to be too costly for his business.

 

He said: “Initially, I got involved with drones. Gravity pretty much sorted that out. They became a nightmare of disasters. They are great for crop plot work but they struggle with broadacre agriculture. They will have a place in the future.”

 

He added: “The key to a value proposition is to maximise profit, minimise expense, save time and have better and more effective management.”

 

He then explored his options to see where he could get real value from adopting new and emerging technologies on the farm which pushed him to work with Annie Brox and Origo for the development of a unique farm IT and network systems based on open technology.

 

“The Origo.farm solution was to build our own wifi network with everything linking into a common source. I want to capture everything that happens on our place into one system. So we put it all into one place. Our seeders can send information, our sprayer, our header, our paddock stations, our farm vehicles. All our information now comes into our own farm house and onto our own farm server developed by Origo.farm”, he explained.