At the beginning of the 2018/2019 season the Macquarie Cotton Growers Association put in a 'Grass Roots Grant' to Cotton Research and Development with the aim of having a look at 'smart farm stuff'.
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Stu Denston, Sinclair Steele and Tim Gainsford and Amanda Thomas went on a reconnaissance trip down south to the 'Automation' field day in Griffith.
Ms Thomas said they saw great technology and innovation with farms that can fully automate irrigations, however did come away thinking that the key to adopting this technology is to find local service providers.
"Last season we worked with Goanna Ag to put in eight inversion towers on existing weather stations and give all farmers access to the weather stations, they were currently rolling out a new technology in the valley using LoRaWAN gateways."
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She said there are currently seven in the valley and another two will be going up soon.
"LoRaWAN is designed to capture and send small packets of sensor data on a low frequency that uses less power," Ms Thomas said.
"We also partnered up with Porosity Ag Services in this project. The aim was to trial the suite of tools on farm and get a warts and all view of technology.
"The on farm trial used the LoRaWAN gateway and has sensors for fuel and water tank monitoring, soil probes, AWS weather station, channel height sensors, sensors on mace meters and canopy temp sensors."
Mr Denston said he manages three farms with much distance in between and having the censors in place means he can have information on what percentage a channel is full, or how much diesel is in the tank every 15 minutes.
The Macquarie Cotton Growers Association also hosted a field day to showcase this technology and get the 'remote management experience' from Mr Denston.
Almost 112 people attended the showcase located at 'Karamea' in Gin Gin.
The day was split into two sections, the morning session listening to providers, and then plugging in the laptop to see what the software side of it looks like, with Mr Denston taking the group through each of the sensors he has in place.
The other focus of the day was to look at a Bankless field that is five years old, they are making some changes and were happy to share this with everyone so others who are interested in Bankless would be more informed about some of the challenges in getting the design right.
The Macquarie Cotton Growers Association was thrilled with such a big crowd and thanked the Richardson and Denston families for their hospitality, opening up their farm and sharing their knowledge.
