Articles
Tree-to-Me: a standardised traceability platform for farm-level visibility with a case study on automated irrigation integration via an API
Article number
1468_2
Pages
9 – 16
Language
English
Abstract
Irrigation accounts for approximately 70% of global freshwater consumption, highlighting the need for sustainable, data-driven practices in agriculture.
Accurate records of resource use are essential to improving water-use efficiency and supporting sustainability outcomes in precision farming.
However, traditional horticultural information systems often lack fine-grained, transparent traceability and typically offer only high-level post-harvest summaries.
These systems also struggle to integrate diverse data sources, ensure data privacy, and scale to meet the demands of modern agriculture.
At the same time, rising requirements for global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance, notably Scope 3 emissions reporting, are driving the need for farm-level traceability.
To address these challenges, Tree-to-Me (T2M), a novel traceability framework tailored to horticulture, has been developed using global data standards.
It captures key on-farm events at varied resolutions through decentralised identification, secure data-sharing protocols, and farmer-controlled access.
For irrigation, the system integrates a precision irrigation technology (Talgil Computing and Control Ltd, Haifa, Israel) that enables automated data capture via cloud-based application programming interfaces (APIs). Data from sensors connected to a Talgil controller are extracted, standardised, and mapped to GS1 global location numbers (GLNs) representing specific irrigation blocks.
This ensures seamless event logging, operational visibility, and alignment with traceability protocols.
A pilot was conducted in the Sundial Orchard at the Tatura Smart Farm (Tatura, Victoria, Australia), demonstrating successful interoperability between the Talgil system and T2M. The integration delivers a scalable solution for automated water-use monitoring, supports verifiable sustainability claims.
Through APIs and digital links, on-farm irrigation operations can now be connected directly to supply chains, ensuring its continued relevance in the evolving landscape of sustainable farming.
Accurate records of resource use are essential to improving water-use efficiency and supporting sustainability outcomes in precision farming.
However, traditional horticultural information systems often lack fine-grained, transparent traceability and typically offer only high-level post-harvest summaries.
These systems also struggle to integrate diverse data sources, ensure data privacy, and scale to meet the demands of modern agriculture.
At the same time, rising requirements for global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance, notably Scope 3 emissions reporting, are driving the need for farm-level traceability.
To address these challenges, Tree-to-Me (T2M), a novel traceability framework tailored to horticulture, has been developed using global data standards.
It captures key on-farm events at varied resolutions through decentralised identification, secure data-sharing protocols, and farmer-controlled access.
For irrigation, the system integrates a precision irrigation technology (Talgil Computing and Control Ltd, Haifa, Israel) that enables automated data capture via cloud-based application programming interfaces (APIs). Data from sensors connected to a Talgil controller are extracted, standardised, and mapped to GS1 global location numbers (GLNs) representing specific irrigation blocks.
This ensures seamless event logging, operational visibility, and alignment with traceability protocols.
A pilot was conducted in the Sundial Orchard at the Tatura Smart Farm (Tatura, Victoria, Australia), demonstrating successful interoperability between the Talgil system and T2M. The integration delivers a scalable solution for automated water-use monitoring, supports verifiable sustainability claims.
Through APIs and digital links, on-farm irrigation operations can now be connected directly to supply chains, ensuring its continued relevance in the evolving landscape of sustainable farming.
Authors
Y. Cho, A.A. Baniya, K. Murphy, A. Scalisi
Keywords
automated irrigation monitoring, decentralised identifiers, digital traceability, global data standards, sustainability credentialing
Groups involved
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