Report: monitoring of food production a crucial IoT function

The globalisation of food production is accelerating due to the Internet of Things, as per a report published this week by Inmarsat.

According to the study, this acceleration has occurred due to producers now being able to more accurately monitor food production, hygene and sustainability, thereby helping them meet increasingly stringent import requirements.

This, it is suggested, will help developing economies in particular, facilitating export to countries from where the regulations originate.

Forty-nine per cent of agritech respondents in Inmarsat’s IoT in Enterprise 2017 report ranked monitoring and improving health and safety as the main priority in the deployment of IoT applications.

The company’s president Paul Gudonis said: “Consumers are becoming more conscious of where their food is coming from, and how this is impacting their environment and carbon footprint.

“With government environmental standards reinforcing these trends and becoming more stringent, environmental, social and financial sustainability is now at the top of the agricultural agenda. This creates a framework of complex standards and regulations, many of which present logistical and operational challenges for the agritech industry.”