Looking past food delivery startups or applications that do grocery shopping for the urban tech-savvy population. Internet of Things (IoT) is now also moving on to tackle the supply side, widely transforming the agricultural scene.

From solutions for small-scale farming households to large farms, the use of technology has helped farmers and agriculturalists minimize their farming effort while maintaining the optimal growth conditions of the plants.

In Vietnam, Cau Dat Farm is one of the farms using IoT in its agricultural system. The farm in Dalat currently has an underrunning IoT solution deploying a gateway to collect data such as light, humidity etc. through a system of sensors, weather stations, and robots, as to enable the management of farm operations via the cloud.

To accomplish this, the farm tech has formed a partnership with Intel in terms of importing its expertise and hardware from the inception of businesses, as well as incorporating other international hardware supplies and knowledge from agribusiness experts.

Also, understanding the operations and business strategy of Cau Dat Farm, it seems that the Vietnamese farmstead is establishing a connection between farmers through transferring the technology to other enablers.

This is because operators believe that Cao Dat Farm alone cannot cover the country’s demand for food. Hence, the key to the strategy instead is to manage the entire network through ensuring the quality, and transparency of the products made by its partners.

“Cau Dat Farm will be a platform for other agribusiness players to join, and all will produce quality goods,” Pham Ngoc Anh Tung, the director of Cau Dat Farm said.

Tung, which had a technology background in automation, was assured that joining Dinh Anh Huan’s Seedcom – one of the biggest success stories in Vietnam is positive that the application of IoT in agriculture will be robust.

Yes. Indeed it is.

Sellers in street market selling fresh organic fruits and vegetables

As aside from Cau Dat Farm, smart farming has been apparent in Vietnam with its primary movers being Captii Ventures-backed MimosaTEK, which provides real-time solutions to optimize farm operation and Tech mogul FPT Corporation, which has also partnered with Japanese IT equipment and service firm Fujitsu in a smart agriculture project in Hanoi.

But what sets Cau Dat Farm apart from its competitors is that the company is also looking to work with local telecommunication platforms which have already developed their IoT platforms. In this sense, Cau Dat Farm will build a standardized database for agriculture, which is not yet available in Vietnam.

“Once these agriculture data becomes big enough, we will be able to solve the questions of forecasting crops, diseases, and productivity. It will also help connect the value chain together, including farmers, agribusiness companies, retailers, experts, and users.” Pham Ngoc Anh Tung, director of Cau Dat Farm adds.

This is because IoT (Internet of Things) can ensure transparency of food production without amplifying the costs, at a time when the country is highly concerned about food safety. Especially with the rampant cases of food safety violations – a recent case being the mass poisoning of 34 Japanese students who visited a Five-star Hotel in Ho Chi Minh city last month.

Considering the final effect, smart farming has a bright future in Vietnam as compared to traditional forms of cultivation. As despite the growing investment in clean products with high technology that might be more time-consuming as well as taxing in price.

But the products of technology – ready-to-eat tomatoes and lettuce, grown without soil that can be consumed unwashed are filling the gap for Vietnamese that are worried about food safety. They are going organic and looking for a healthy and reasonably priced choice – which make this profitable in the long run.

For more information, please visit http://caudatfarm.com/

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media