A farmer in South Africa explains how a cloud-based platform is helping him increase crop growth and improve business efficiency.
MyFarmWeb is a cloud-based analytics platform which enables farmers to gather and analyse agricultural data from their operations.
Multiple sensors across a farmer’s land – connected to mobile networks – collate and feedback data on things like soil quality, yield data, weather forecasts and more.
Theunis Pretorius, a farmer based in the eastern Free State province, South Africa, has seen his farming yields increase by 15-20% a year since he started using MyFarmWeb.
This information helps farmers make better decisions, cut costs and run their farms more efficiently.
“Precision farming – the use of data on farms to inform decisions – is something we have been doing since 2007.
“When I started farming, I only had data records of rainfall and yield, tracing back to 1950.
"Now, I am reaching a point where every operation on the farm is providing me with data – every machine is sharing data in real-time, whether that be around soil quality, fertilisation, harvesting or more – and helping inform my decisions.”
"MyFarmWeb has taken that to the next level for us.”
“MyFarmWeb gives us data in much more detail and brings it all into one place.
"Through the platform, we can analyse soil on a level-by-level basis and adjust where needed, whether that be through fertiliser levels, irrigation or so on, allowing us to reduce waste and our impact on the environment.
"This has resulted in greater productivity year-on-year and enabled us to run our farm in more sustainable, efficient ways.”
“We are even looking to expand our use of chip technology to monitor the livestock and help to monitor stock theft. Our investors will also be able to monitor all the equipment and livestock movement and performance."
MyFarmWeb is provided by Mezzanine, a subsidiary of Vodafone’s African business Vodacom and one of Vodafone Business’ IoT centres of competence.
The platform is currently being used by more than 6,500 farms across sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, New Zealand and the USA, covering over 2 million hectares of land.
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