By Cecelia Alphonsus
Used properly Precision Agriculture can contribute to reduced operational costs and higher yield.
TELUK PANGLIMA GARANG – Nestled along a narrow village road in Teluk Mengkuang lies a one-and-a-half-acre satellite chili farm in the midst of oil palm plantations. The satellite farm is the first smart fertigation chili satellite farm in Malaysia, located 2km away from the farm produce collection centre of the Farmers Association of Kuala Langat. Utilizing the smart fertigation system by Atilze Digital, this satellite farm has according to reported data improved production yields while reducing operational costs.
According to agropreneur, NorHashim bin Kamisan, who has been utilizing Atilze’s smart fertigation system for two seasons since February 2017, “the cost for fertilizer has decreased by 10 to 20 per cent and instead of two farmhands, I only need one person per acre of land now, reducing my labour cost by 50 per cent.”
Recently, one of NorHashim’s farms made it into the Malaysian Guiness Book of Records for producing a record 23 tonnes of chili in a day via the smart fertigation method.
The satellite farm in Teluk Panglima Garang was launched in April 2018 and is a collaborative project between Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and Atilze Digital Sdn Bhd.
At the core of the smart fertigation system is Atilze’s Sensor Hub which is designed for rapid Internet-of-Things (IoT) deployment and comes fully customizable with an open IoT hardware platform.
“This sensor hub here at the satellite farm, is Kuala Langat customized,” says Azman Ismail, Product Director at Atilze Digital.
“The whole dashboard is in the Kuala Langat dialect, to make it easy for locals to understand the simple vocabulary used to state the action that is needed for them to take.”
The satellite farm project is to create an innovative supply chain that establishes a reliable and continuous sales channel for young agropreneurs. Produce is harvested and sent to the collection centre in Kuala Langat. According to Azman, the receipt issued at the collection centre is even recognized by local banks as proof of income.
Participants in the project are housed in colourful mounted container chalets to manage the system on the farm itself. According to Azman, the participants are selected from the B40 group and most, if not all have no prior farming experience.
The smart fertigation system utilizes Atilze’s IoT platform to collect data from various sensor points which records a variety of information from humidity to soil conditions, the platform then compiles, analyses and distributes actionable information to the end user via a dashboard which can be accessed through a laptop or smart phone. If there is no 3G or 4G networks available, Atilze’s LoRa gateway provides low-power and long-range wireless protocol network to allow sensors and connected objects to collect and send data back to an IoT data cloud server for processing.
Azman is excited that this new satellite-powered agricultural management platform will empower agropreneurs and stakeholders by using IoT to increase yield and quantity.
“The smart fertigation system was able to yield 3,650 kg of chilies compared to 3,000kg harvested using traditional fertigation methods from one planting cycle.”
“Traditional fertigation also takes up a lot of time to manually irrigate the plots as well as to fertilize it. With Atilze’s smart fertigation system, the process is automated.”
An acre of land yields approximately 4,000 polybags of Sakata 461 chili or Kulai 461. A variety that is favoured for cultivation via the fertigation method as it is more durable and doesn’t rot fast.
