Emerging technologies like blockchain and smart devices are reshaping the agrarian industry, and revolutionising agriculture and food supply chains. One company leading this transformation is Smart Grow Agritech.
By integrating blockchain and IoT devices, they assist vineyards and wine farmers in tracking critical data, potentially saving millions of dollars. ‘So for a little over a year now, I’ve been working with vineyards in the state of Virginia, installing Smart IoT devices to measure and monitor climate and logging that data to the blockchain,’ said Alexander Mann (Founder and CEO of Smart Grow Agritech).
‘And in doing that, I caught the attention of the hardware manufacturer that I’m utilising, WeatherFlow-Tempest, and we’ve been having some conversations about my project that involves moving the weather station data to the blockchain and what some of the benefits and downstream applications of that might be.’
Mann noted that WeatherFlow-Tempest operates a personal private weather station network of about 80,000 stations and was interested in converting their network over to the BSV blockchain.
‘To that end, I proposed a proof of concept test. In the next few weeks, we will be gearing up to put about 1.4 million transactions on-chain per day over the course of a seven-day test period, and hoping to gather a lot of metrics and look at the data and see what it might look like to scale this up to a full global massive net.’
A combination of smart technology and the BSV blockchain
Mann explained that these IoT devices function as mini ‘weather stations’, collecting real-time data to support precise vineyard management decisions. This data is then stored on the BSV blockchain, which serves as an immutable ledger. The BSV blockchain’s scalability allows it to store large volumes of data from these devices while still providing quick access to critical information for the end-user.
‘So WeatherFlow-Tempest manufactures a really awesome personal weather station. I recommend it to anyone who owns a home or a business. There are very low costs of around $300 as a one-time cost. And the business model is really forward-thinking and innovative,’ Mann said.
‘Instead of charging a very high price or a monthly subscription fee and monetising the product upfront, they had a focus on keeping costs low and expanding the network as rapidly as possible and then looking at ways to monetise the data pool that they create downstream,’ he said.
Taking the opportunity
Mann said that he saw the opportunity after installing the systems in a nearby valley., but that there were some questions around what the station can do and what its limitations were.
‘I found that the standard dashboard that Tempest offers was not exactly tailored towards an agricultural purpose. So I started looking at ways to develop my own post-processing platform to be able to take the data that the Tempest weather station is providing and add value there,’ he said.
This includes tracking frost risk and frost mitigation, he said. ‘So early on in the season, there’s a big risk to Vines in Virginia in the early spring. It can get quite cold after the buds wake up or break. And so being able to provide the farmers with a little bit more insight into what the actual conditions are going to be in their vineyard is super valuable.’
Mann said that using the BSV blockchain as a basis, it is possible to take all of the weather data for the season and compress it down to a single-page consumer-facing PDF that can be accessed by scanning a QR code.
