Future
Although the broadband rollout by Fonterra and Telecom will increase the quality of transmission, the Wards would like to see investment in wireless technology to enable data capture at generation sources around the farm to reduce transcription errors and duplication.
In the future, the Wards plan to invest in palm pilot type hardware that will enable them to input information directly into the system. This would be particularly useful during calving, which is very busy time and requires accurate capture of information. However there are risks associated with operating technology in wet areas and at present, appropriate hardware is not readily available. Alternatively they may investigate the possibility of training the farmhand or an extra resource to capture information during the calving process.
Furthermore, the Wards have noted that much of their work necessitates physical walks around the farm to identify and collect pasture and soil data. If remote monitoring could be cost-effectively and reliably implemented (for example, remote sensors identifying pasture data, with wireless transmission back to a base unit), then further timesavings would be possible.
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