The world is changing very quickly. Gottfried Pessl, President and Founder of Pessl Instruments GmbH, shares how Pessl Instruments equipment can help monitor the field while staying in the quarantine most of the time.

“Every trip to the field costs time and money, but during coronavirus outbreak, it could be impossible to check all crops. Remote field monitoring systems allow to reduce field visits to only when they are really necessary,” – begins explaining Gottfried Pessl. “These days target audience for Pessl Instruments is consultants of farmers, who have to travel all year-round. One of our consultants, who started working with us in California, was traveling around 80 000 km per year with a radius of only 150 km. In a short period of time, he reduced his road time by 70% and increased his business by 200%.’’

You mentioned a consultant with a staggering number of hours spent on the road. Is this due to the fact there’s a lot of stations in the field?

“As a leading global manufacturer of IOT´s (Internet of Things) for farmers, offering weather stations, soil moisture systems, insect traps, crop growth cameras, portable soil and tissue laboratories, trackers of various kinds, and the relevant decision support software, we help over 100.000 daily FieldClimate users that have more than 50.000 connected stations. So yes, the demand for us to help them in the field as well is great. And there are tens of thousands of these consultants like the one in California all over the globe supporting farmers with sometimes completely random day to day visits, but this will definitely change after the end of the coronavirus.”

What is the current status of technology in the sector of agriculture? What are its advantages?

“The technology is there for the last 20 years but used by only a small percentage of farmers. But this now changes rapidly. Remote monitoring is not in the future; it is already in the present. It provides the opportunity to identify problems timely without visiting the field. It even provides higher accuracy than physical visits. The farmer and consultant can install weather stations which monitor and alert them in real time about the actual field weather: temperature, relative humidity, rain fall, soil moisture, head units, wind gusts, ET, DeltaT, frost and heat risks, forecasted frost and rains and many more things. This way all needed actions can be taken in time and without delay.”

Do you think the coronavirus somehow raised the popularity of this kind of equipment?

Absolutely. We already receive more and more demands each day. Just yesterday we were contacted by one of major tomato growers in USA who already has over 300 soil moisture systems. And wants to install even more different ones; the ones to monitor insects, phenology, nutrition and work force tracking. And his demands are similar to a large tomato company from Turkey that has the same requests. The equipment will ensure them to have better risk management and at the same time protect the environment, workers and supply us with the best nutritious food.”

Do you think any other sectors could benefit from using remote monitoring?

“I have heard that GLOBALG.A.P. is extending certificates up to 6 months, because inspectors cannot travel to farms now to make an audit. I believe permanent and mobile IoT solutions can be the answer even for GLOBALG.A.P. to do the certificates this way and make sure our food we eat is safe”

What is the best way to start using this technology?

Pessl Instruments is now offering special starter kits to Consultants all over the world who are not yet familiar or experienced with this kind of equipment and/or technology but want to dive into this new remote twenty-four seven monitoring world. Please contact me personally on my e-mail or LinkedIn – [email protected] – for more details.