Going Bananas With Digital
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- January 23, 2022
As farmers improve their production processes to be more sustainable, they are harnessing not just organic materials and clean energy but digital technologies such as AI and IoT.
Banana farming, for example, might seem a fairly basic operation situated well away from a gleaming data center or supercomputer. Yet an Australian banana farmer has embraced digital transformation as enthusiastically as many leading corporates.
Queensland-based Bartle Frere Bananas is on a journey to digitize its production and use AI and IoT to boost efficiency and yield and become a showpiece for the potential of smart farming.
Given that the humble banana is the number one selling product in Australian supermarkets, all grown locally, there is a significant potential impact on the agricultural industry as digital technology is more widely adopted.
Transparency for all
The project has two aims: to make the farming process more efficient and sustainable — with the aid of solar power — and then to deliver transparency through the supply chain for producer monitoring and consumers.
Bartle Frere is partnering with Japanese company Hitachi Vantara with support from the Australian Government’s National Land Care program and implementing AI. In this application, the AI analyzes irrigation data collected from weather monitoring stations and soil moisture sensors to control moisture levels per section of land, controlling how much water and when to supply it. Bartle Frere is one of four trial sites for the technology.
“This project will provide detailed examples to the broader horticulture sector about the effectiveness of establishing remote monitoring and data analytics”
In the ultimate vision, IoT technology will control fertilization through solar-powered sensors on drain pumps that monitor how much fertilizer is being dumped into the river to lower runoff and curb the negative environmental impact. In addition, there will also be a system that can identify precisely the right time to determine when the bananas are ready to be harvested.
RFID also has a role, acting as a supply-chain tracking system with tags attached to each banana tree, as well as pallets, which will track the fruit-to-market process, using radio waves to transmit information. The banana bunches are initially RFID tagged in the paddocks and then again when they are bagged. Cat M1 cellular IoT technology provides the data to the cloud while handheld readers are reading UHF RFID tags.
The tags are removed once the bunch is cut and harvested. Then new GPS and condition monitoring tags are affixed to the cartons so the farm can monitor the fruit as it moves through the supply chain, maintaining the bananas’ optimal ripeness for the transport process. Before implementing this technology, someone from the farm would have to travel to a distribution center or warehouse to be there in person for quality assurance, but this can now primarily be remotely monitored.
Test case for the industry
Another partner in the program is Hort Innovation, a grower-owned, not-for-profit research and development corporation for Australia's horticulture industry, Hort Innovation’s primary function is to create value for horticulture growers and those across the horticulture supply chain. Each year it invests more than AUD120 million in R&D.
“This project will provide detailed examples to the broader horticulture sector about the effectiveness of establishing remote monitoring and data analytics to support horticultures' environmental performance, overall," said Anthony Kachenko, Hort Innovation Australia's general manager of stakeholder experience.
The Bartle Frere case study was presented at last year’s COP26 event in Glasgow under the theme ‘Technology and Data are Key to Save the Planet.’
Gavin Devaney from Bartle Frere says consumers increasingly want to know where their food is coming from and how it is grown. The digital technology delivers this information so consumers can make informed choices.
"We've now got the real-time, advanced sensing, leachate monitoring, sediment analysis, and data capture in place, which runs through Hitachi's Lumada Manufacturing Insights to predict and prescribe actionable insights based on data algorithms we have helped design,” said Devaney.
“These insights guide our best management practices around irrigation, fertilization, and plant care."
Happy customers
Devaney has an anecdote that illustrates the benefits anticipated from the RFID implementation. A large proportion of the bananas at the farm are sold at Aldi supermarkets, and on one occasion, Devaney received a call from a man who had purchased some bananas and had been so impressed with them he asked the store manager where they came from.
The consumer asked how he could be sure he was purchasing Bartle Frere products in the future, so the quality of his fruit could be guaranteed.
There was no way this could be done at that time, but with this digital project well underway, it could soon become a reality.
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/Lemon_tm