SWAN Systems internal and industry insights to help you optimise your irrigation and nutrient management.
SWAN Systems were at Startup Alley at evokeAG 2020. In this post, Rod shares his thoughts on agtech, big data and managing water & nutrients to minimise adverse environmental impacts
The Summer 2019 edition of The Irrigation Australia Journal includes a Smart Irrigation feature, and we were honoured to contribute. The focus of this feature is to look at the application of digital technology to irrigation.
SWAN Systems, based in Perth, Western Australia, has built an Internet of things (IoT) platform that uses irrigation data from multiple sources to help farmers precisely manage their irrigation. SWAN’s decision-support software allows for better irrigation and nutrient management, the optimised use of scarce resources, and better environmental outcomes. SWAN is looking for partners for a trial expansion into the United States in 2020.
To help the modern day irrigator to manage their resources, many are looking for solutions in the burgeoning agricultural app industry. SWAN Systems is a SaaS solution that collects, processes and presents data from many on-farm sources, enabling the irrigator to make better informed decisions.
In 2017, the WA State Government helped support SWAN Systems' development by awarding us with a grant under the Premier’s Agriculture and Aquaculture Entrepreneurship Program. See what our founders had to say about their experience with the program.
SWAN Systems took out top honour in the Digital Innovation category at the WA Innovator of the Year awards ceremony held at Kings Park on Wednesday November 7. For SWAN Systems, winning this award is a valuable recognition of the great work our team has invested and continues to invest into transforming the irrigation industry with our revolutionary technology.
The Piara Waters complex is a challenging site to manage, however significant potential water savings were able to be identified. We found there was potential to save over 20% in water which led to an estimated 40% reduction in drainage of irrigation water beyond the rootzone. Having data collated from different sources (flow meters, soil moisture probes, satellite imagery, climatic data, and forecast and actual weather) available in one place for analysis and translation into actionable information were identified as key benefits.
Without proper scheduling tools, irrigators – erring on the side of caution – typically overestimate water requirements by 20%. Lightning Park comes with specific turf management considerations, which make optimisation of irrigation applications even more challenging. SWAN Systems was used for retrospective analysis of the previous year's irrigation. In total, it was discovered that watering was 10% over budget for the 2017/18 irrigation season. SWAN Systems is now helping to facilitate improved management of soil moisture, turf condition and water allocation.
SWAN Systems was used to review leaching estimates and soil moisture status and identified that significant water and nutrient savings were possible. It was found water applications could be reduced by 30%, with a concomitant reduction in energy use.
In this, the fourth (and final) article in SWAN Systems’ Overflow series, we will focus on golf course management. SWAN's software analyses the data to provide recommendations for optimised irrigation.
