Industry News

As we move towards summer, WaterForce are supporting clients with new technology. 2015/16 is looking like another particularly dry irrigation season,with an El Nino system looming, and clients throughout the country wanting access to more information to support better results.  

Farmers are aiming to utilise water in smarter and more efficient ways, and gain greater value from their resources. Adding technology to new and old pivot irrigators is assisting in greater precision and understanding of their irrigation scheduling.

New technologies are available from WaterForce and Valley including GPS location and guidance systems, Variable rate irrigation for 'Zone control' and 'Individual sprinkler control' (VRI-Z & VRI-iS), flow and moisture monitoring hardware as well as SCADAfarm - a cellular based pivot control and monitoring platform for Valley pivots.

SCADAfarm uses secure cellular connections and cloud based technology to enable farmers to remotely control and operate their pivots from anywhere in the world via their laptops, tablets or smartphones - if you can access the internet you can access SCADAfarm.

Groundbreaking technologies, such as SCADAfarm and Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI), have been increasingly popular with our clients.  The addition of wireless field remote controls (SCADAfarm) alongside other telemetry devices has been welcomed as popular additions to on farm management .

Over winter WaterForce has installed plug and play SCADAfarm cellular remote control technology, throughout the country, on dozens of Valley centre pivots. Providing a “virtual control panel” from your office & mobile devices, is empowering farmers to make quality informed business decisions. Farmers are using SCADAfarm for various on farm management operations including:

• Managing flow demands
• Effluent pump control
• Loading and selecting Variable Rate Irrigation (VRI ) prescriptions (plans)
• Day to day operations such as:  remote stop / start and forward/reverse control of the pivots
• ‘Stop in slot’ functionality, assisting farmers with planning field works, ensuring safe parking positions when on farm works need to occur, and adding to the wind safety planning
• Monitoring pivot operation and fault finding

SCADAfarm is an evolving telemetry platform, with additional modules being added regularly for enhanced management of your fields via the internet. Knowing the current state of their pivots i.e. water on/off, running/stopped, direction of travel, pressure, speed/application depth and position provides farmers with the peace of mind that if they should leave the farm for whatever reason, they can still login and find out how their irrigation system is performing. The 'charting' feature of SCADAfarm allows you to review the management of your system over the season.

For further information regarding how SCADAfarm can assist on your farm, please contact your local WaterForce Branch on 0800 436 723 or email our dedicated SCADAfarm team on [email protected]