Major investment across South West Wales will help narrow the digital divide between urban and rural areas in a boost for agriculture and remote communities.
Forming part of the Swansea Bay City Deal’s £25m digital infrastructure programme, a dedicated rural workstream is committed to delivering high-quality connectivity to places where the cost of connecting homes and businesses would otherwise be too high for commercial investment alone to be viable.
Investing in high-speed broadband in rural communities across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, and Swansea would help enable the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) technology to benefit businesses including farms.
This technology would help farmers monitor crops, livestock, machinery and environmental conditions remotely and in real time, potentially leading to improved decision-making, resource efficiency and cost savings.
Supporting initiatives such as UK Government’s Project Gigabit is also a key aspect of the digital infrastructure programme’s rural workstream. Local digital champions are on board to ensure communities are aware of when applications for voucher schemes are being accepted.
©Pic: pixabay
Forming part of the Swansea Bay City Deal’s £25m digital infrastructure programme, a dedicated rural workstream is committed to delivering high-quality connectivity to places where the cost of connecting homes and businesses would otherwise be too high for commercial investment alone to be viable.
Investing in high-speed broadband in rural communities across Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Neath Port Talbot, and Swansea would help enable the introduction of Internet of Things (IoT) technology to benefit businesses including farms.
This technology would help farmers monitor crops, livestock, machinery and environmental conditions remotely and in real time, potentially leading to improved decision-making, resource efficiency and cost savings.
Supporting initiatives such as UK Government’s Project Gigabit is also a key aspect of the digital infrastructure programme’s rural workstream. Local digital champions are on board to ensure communities are aware of when applications for voucher schemes are being accepted.
©Pic: pixabay
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NewsTranscript
00:00Well, I'm Stephen James and this is Gelliole, here near the village of Clindurwen, which is just a mile or so away.
00:07We live, believe it or not, on the Pembrokeshire-Carmarthenshire boundary, and one time we lived in Carmarthenshire, at this very place here,
00:14and now we live in Pembrokeshire, and we're still in the same place.
00:17I'm a dairy farmer, and I've been farming here for 40 years.
00:22As part of where I was brought up, I was brought up on a farm called Llynkelyn, just across the valley from here.
00:31Joyce and I got married, we moved here, and my mother's family were farming and my father's farming, so it's in my genes, I suppose.
00:42You know, farms have expanded over the years, but technology has really advanced.
00:46We've got electronic identification in their ears, which allows us to manage the cows, you know, individually.
00:54Then the technology that we've brought in, we use collars around the cow now, which, if the animal has increased in activity, it shows up.
01:02It tells us the cow is on heat, it shows the movement of the animal and can tell whether it's lame or not.
01:09And then it also looks at its body condition, so body condition scoring, we call it,
01:14and if the animal is losing weight, or if a number of animals are losing weight, then we can say, well, the diet is wrong.
01:21Those are little bits of productivity that improve, that make us more productive.
01:25You know, the impact is the improved technology and more efficient use of that technology on a farm.
01:33I'm Rhys Jones, and I'm the technical lead for Arwa in DGC.
01:37So we look at ways of responsible use of antimicrobials on farms, looking at ways of utilizing technology to reduce antibiotic usage and anthelmintic usage,
01:49to avoid having antimicrobial resistance within the farm, in the animals, and also in the environment.
01:59For productivity and for enhanced health within animals, having technology is crucial to improve efficiency and the sustainability of farms.
02:10So we have wearable devices available for animals that condenses into an algorithmic analysis, and that is brought back to the farmer and accessible through his smartphone.
02:23The sticking point is having correct connectivity and upload speeds that are sufficient to have real-time actionable alerts for the farmers.
02:34So you're reducing your imports, you're reducing your costs, but you're utilizing the product in the right places.
02:41Eighty-four percent of land mass in Wales is a rural area of farming, with over 58,300 people working within the industry.
02:52Getting an efficient and productive industry requires that we're not on the back foot with regards to technology.