Business View Oceania

38 BUSINESS VIEW OCEANIA VOLUME 4, ISSUE 12 depending on how wet the leaves were when they were picked, those same 1000 heads of lettuce could end up rotten by the time they hit the shelves. He explains, “So don’t say 1000 lettuces, say 1000 lettuces that will last two weeks minimum on the shelf, and that means you have to measure how wet the leaf is. That will reduce wastage in the journey to the shelf and eventually home and less food will end up in the bin.” It’s a really simple case of having data about the products. Zeichner notes, “It’s used through retail, it’s used through distribution, it’s used at the farm and that’s an end-to-end thing you can do with IoT. So the farmers that do that are preferred as the place to go because the retailers now know that they can get lettuce that will last longer, and farmers know they’re not picking stuff that’s going to be wasted. It saves on wastage, cost, and everything else.” IoTAA has five “enabler” workstreams that break down into collaboration, data use, cybersecurity, interoperability, and start-ups. Each one of the sectoral workstreams has its own use cases for which the Internet of Things technology may be differently applied. But the technology underpinning it is often quite similar. The enablers are all about the common factors that sit across everything. Based out of Sydney, IoTAA has board members across the country in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland. Operations are run by a small staff of three and supported by various contractors, as well as the resources produced by volunteers. “Our members pay to be members, but our workstreams and the programs they run are run by those members,” Zeichner says. “I’m not the font of all knowledge – that would be ridiculous. I am the orchestra conductor of how we share, collaborate, expand, and do cross-sectoral work. They are the producers of content.” All reports and guides the association produces are created by its membership, which numbers 500 participating organisations and nearly 1000 individual members. Being able to draw from such a large pool of knowledge is one of the keys to making the alliance work well. Zeichner notes, IoT is transforming the Australian food and agribusiness sector. IoTAA member, Goanna Ag’s GoField Plus monitors crop stress levels, measures and forecasts water use and identifies optimum time to maximise yield from applied irrigations. Image courtesy of Goanna Ag.