Re:Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the ...
by gumby on Thursday June 20, 2024 @02:05PM
(#40741449)
There's (relatively) lots of water in the Barossa Valley and it's worth growing a thirsty high value crop like grapes there. And even there the cost structure you say is unsupportable.
But the economics of farming in the Eyre Peninsula is quite different and they really have a water problem. From a food PoV these are the people we really need to help.
(I have family in both, not to mention in laws in Germany who also have a water problem...getting rid of it!)
As I said in the previous comment, right now, high-value crop growers like wine grape growers pay $700-$1000 or more per site (including reader/comms module and sensors), and generally only install one monitoring point per block (I have a system running at one of Australia's top boutique/biodynamic wine makers and at current prices he can only cost-justify having one 10 monitoring sites over his 70 acres of vines).
So, whatever we can do to drive down the cost to $20 or less should deliver big wins.
> Maybe talk to someone at Nordic
Yep, we're working with hardware engineers who are well connected to people at Nordic.