IoT on the Farm
Chapter Three
Syllabus topic 3, "IoT, Data Analytics with reference to Farm Accounting."
Pages 5 to 6 of 110
In one line
The Internet of Things is a network of devices that sense something physical, report it without a person writing anything down, and so turn a farm measurement into an accounting entry automatically.
Why this is on an accounting syllabus
It would be easy to write this topic as a list of gadgets. That is not what MU is asking. Her topic line is "IoT, Data Analytics with reference to Farm Accounting." The words that matter are with reference to farm accounting.
So take every device below and follow it to the entry it produces. A sensor that does not end in a record is not on this syllabus.
What IoT is
Three parts, and all three have to be present.
- A thing. A physical object on the farm: a soil probe, a water meter, a milk meter, a weighing bridge, a collar on a cow, a tag on a sack, a tractor.
- A sensor and a connection. The thing measures something and sends it, over a mobile network or a local radio link, without anyone typing.
- A place the data lands. A server or an application that stores the reading, timestamps it and makes it available.
The accounting significance is in part 2. The absence of a human being between the event and the record is the whole point. Every classical weakness of a farm's books, entries made from memory in the evening, entries not made at all in the busy season, entries made by somebody with a reason to shade them, comes from that human step.
Device to entry: the table that answers the question
| Device on the farm | What it measures | The accounting record it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Soil moisture and nutrient probe | Water and nutrient status by field | Input consumption by field, so the cultivation register is filled from the field itself |
| Smart water meter on a pump | Litres pumped, hours run | Irrigation cost by field, and electricity or diesel consumption |
| Automatic weather station | Rainfall, temperature, humidity | Evidence for an insurance or calamity claim, and the reason a yield fell |
| Milk meter in a parlour | Litres per animal per milking | Production record per animal, feeding into revenue and into per-animal cost |
| Animal collar or ear tag | Movement, rumination, health alerts, calving | The livestock register: births, deaths, sickness, and so the increase in the herd |
| Weighbridge with an automatic reader | Weight in and out | Receipt register on inward, sales quantity on outward |
| Grain store sensors | Temperature, humidity, weight | Stock book quantities, and evidence of storage loss |
| GPS and telematics on a tractor | Hours worked, in which field, fuel used | Machinery cost allocated to the field that used it, and depreciation on running hours |
| RFID tag on inputs | Which sack went where, when | Issue register entries |
| Drone or satellite imagery | Area sown, crop health, damage | Area under each crop, and evidence of a loss |
IoT on the Farm
What this changes in the books
1. The register is filled by the event, not by the memory of it. The muster roll, the cultivation register, the stock book and the issue register of Module II do not disappear. They stop being written by hand.
2. Cost allocation becomes exact instead of estimated. A tractor's hours were once apportioned to fields by guess. Telematics reports them.
3. Quantities are recorded, not only rupees. This is the largest gain, because every useful farm ratio is a physical one.
4. Ind AS 41 becomes workable. A herd measured at fair value less costs to sell has to be counted, weighed and aged at each reporting date. Tags and weighing systems do that continuously. The chapters on measurement and on disclosure will ask for the physical quantity of each group of biological assets at the end of the period, which is paragraph 46 of the standard, and IoT is how a real farm produces it.
5. Internal control improves. A reading the labourer did not write cannot be written to suit the labourer.
The limits, which an answer should name
- Cost. Sensors, connectivity and subscriptions are real expenditure, and on a small holding they may exceed the value of the information.
- Connectivity. Many farms are where the mobile signal is not.
- Skill. Somebody has to read the output and act on it.
- Data quality. A wrongly placed probe reports confidently and wrongly, and a machine-made record is trusted more than a hand-made one, which makes a wrong one more dangerous.
- Ownership and privacy of the data. The platform that collects the farm's yield data is often the same company that sells the farm its inputs.
- Maintenance. A dead sensor stops reporting, and a series with a hole in it is worse than no series if nobody notices.
The sentence to carry into the exam
IoT does not change what farm accounting records. It changes who records it, when, and how reliably.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.