The LoRa Alliance has reported that the LoRaWAN open standard has become a primary connectivity method for smart agriculture, reaching 125 million connected devices globally by the end of 2025. The technology is being used to connect sensors in remote fields and pastures that lack cellular or Wi-Fi coverage.

Technical specifications for the standard include long-range coverage of several kilometres per gateway and low power consumption, allowing sensors to operate for years on small batteries. The system uses unlicensed spectrum, eliminating the need for SIM cards or data plans. Satellite-connected LoRaWAN is also being deployed to extend coverage to the most remote regions.

In Ghana and Brazil, the technology is used to monitor banana plants for disease using sensors that track temperature and humidity on a 50-metre grid. In Australia, solar-powered GPS ear tags weighing under 30 grams are used to track cattle across wide grazing lands. Other applications include soil moisture monitoring for durian estates in Malaysia and water optimisation for vegetable crops in Bulgaria.

“LoRaWAN is winning in the smart agriculture market for one simple reason: it reaches where farming actually happens,” said Alper Yegin, CEO of the LoRa Alliance. He noted that the technology allows farmers to roll out their own networks in regions far from existing infrastructure without the complexity of cellular systems.

The alliance stated that the open standard allows farms to start with a single application, such as soil monitoring, and add further services like irrigation control or livestock tracking to the same network over time. Ruggedised sensors used in these deployments are rated for up to 10 years of battery life.