The agriculture industry consumes tremendous amounts of water to grow crops as well as applies vast quantities of nitrogen fertilizers. Both places pressures on natural resources.

As part of an IoT for Good and sustainability effort, AT&T and WaterBit have teamed up to help farmers, in this case, rice farmers, to measure water and reduce emissions in farming. The combination of data insights and IoT sensors enable farmers to effectively manage and monitor an Alternate Wetting and Dry (AWD) process. This conservation method is traditionally hard to manage yet helps farmers reduce water, fuel and electricity use for running irrigation pumps, and to reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers.

The introduction of IoT provides high-quality data for near real-time insights into crop conditions like soil moisture and nutrients so farmers can better manage their crops and reap greater yields. An excellent example of how newly captured data generates far greater efficiency and effectiveness from traditional methods.

One very insightful comment from this agricultural use case that can play out across all industries comes from Hank Giclas, SVP, science, and technology, at Western Growers. He eloquently states, “These types of strategic collaborations are necessary to bring IoT to the field level and can help growers drive further precision into their operations,”

As a product manager, VP of Innovation or builder of IoT solutions, what strategic collaborations do you need to pursue to bring IoT to the field level to vastly improve operational efficiencies and yield big returns?

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