Reliable farm monitoring systems

Primary Insight specialise in providing reliable farm monitoring systems to farmers and growers that add value to their business. We work hard to find the right solution for each farm and believe that monitoring systems must add value to the farm business.

Supplied by Primary Insight

The team comprises of Andrew Curtis, Cindy Lowe and Charlotte Butler, who between them have over 30 years’ experience of farm monitoring.

Our farm monitoring solutions range from single sensors to whole farm monitoring solutions, and include technical advice, installation, and on-going support of soil moisture probes, weather stations, flow meters, water-level sensors, effluent and irrigator tracking, and water quality sensors.

Irrigation and fertiliser monitoring solutions are our speciality. For farmers and growers, we use Sentek TriSCAN vertical soil moisture probes, a best-in-class Australian made probe that is renowned for its accuracy, reliability and user-friendly IRRIMAX web display. Sentek probes come in 30cm, 60cm and 90cm lengths, with sensors every 10cm down the probe.

The TriSCAN sensor measures the water and volumetric ion content of the soil, which alongside soil moisture enables the tracking of fertiliser movement down the soil profile. Sentek probes log data in realtime and have both telemetry and Bluetooth data transfer options. The IRRIMAX web display allows for the custom display of data resulting in its easy interpretation. It also has analysis features such as root activity and irrigation effectiveness which are particularly useful for improving irrigation practice.

In addition, for larger family farming businesses and corporates Primary Insight support the SWAN Systems irrigation monitoring solution, a web-based irrigation scheduling and nutrient tracking tool that allows for easy centralised decision-making and oversight at irrigation zone or paddock scale. A key feature of SWAN Systems is its ability to provide a 7-day irrigation forecast, what paddocks or blocks will need to be irrigated and when over the coming week.

For orchards and vineyards, Primary Insight can now also offer stem potential sensors that measure the stress of the tree or vine in real-time. Previously the use of a manual ‘pressure chamber’ was the only way of doing this. When combined with a soil moisture probe this provides the ultimate irrigation monitoring solution for monitoring quality fruit production.

Primary Insight also undertakes irrigator and effluent performance assessments and can troubleshoot irrigator operation and technology issues. We run free workshops for irrigators on irrigation system operation and management and provide certificates of attendance that will satisfy your Farm Environment Plan requirements.

Making compliance practical and easy is another key focus area for the Primary Insight team. We combine our considerable farm systems and farm monitoring knowledge with our comprehensive understanding of regulatory compliance to assist farmers and growers cost-effectively meet their compliance requirements or can undertake compliance requirements on behalf.

IRRIMAX Irrigation Analysis: Blue too much, red too little, Green spot-on.

Where possible our goal is to make compliance useful for the farm business, minimising unproductive cost and unnecessary hassle.

If you’ve farm monitoring or compliance monitoring challenge you need sorting, come talk to the Primary Insight team at South Island Agricultural Field days. We arein the West section, on stand number 385a.