LoRaWan has become the connectivity method of choice for smart agriculture, from single farms to national programmes, according to the LoRa Alliance.

Agriculture is one of the hardest environments in the world to connect because its fields, animals and other assets sit far beyond the reach of main power or reliable networks.

“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 (lora-alliance.org). “As the LPWAN technology with the highest accessibility, most robust ecosystem support and widest global adoption, it can connect to a remote field, a moving herd or an entire estate, and address unique applications without the cost and complexity of cellular, wifi or Bluetooth.”

One reason is a single gateway can cover kilometres-wide fields and pastures. Sensors and tags can also run for years on small or solar batteries.

The technology uses free, unlicensed spectrum, so there are no SIMs, spectrum fees or per-device data plans. For distributed outdoor sites, it is more convenient to deploy than cellular, wifi or Bluetooth. Farmers can roll out their own networks in remote regions, far from existing infrastructure.

Where terrestrial coverage runs out, satellite-connected LoRaWan extends the same network to the most remote fields.

There are more than 650 LoRaWan-certified devices from more than 334 LoRa Alliance members, giving growers a broad range of sensors and gateways. More than 125 million devices were connected worldwide via LoRaWan at the end of 2025.

These strengths have enabled LoRa Alliance members to address emerging smart agriculture opportunities. For examples, the Banalytics (lacuna-space.com/from-ghana-to-brazil-a-satellite-powered-early-warning-system-for-banana-farms/) project in Ghana and Brazil, supported by Lacuna Space, uses satellite-connected LoRaWan sensors to detect black sigatoka, the world’s most damaging banana disease, before symptoms spread. Around ten instrumented plants per hectare, equivalent to roughly four per acre, track temperature and humidity, soil-nutrient sensors sit on a 50m grid, while AI imaging flags early onset. Data from one monitored hectare, around 2.5 acres, extend across the wider growing area, helping growers cut unnecessary fungicide and protect yield in remote regions where conventional networks do not reach.

In Australia, MooField fits lightweight GPS ear tags, each under 30g and solar-powered, to cattle ranging across wide grazing land (usecase-selector.rakwireless.com/lorawan-cattle-tracking-iot). Built on RAK Wireless LoRaWan gateways with solar batteries and remote management, the tags give farmers real-time herd location without mains power or daily searches. The team is now exploring satellite backhaul to cover even larger roaming areas.

On a durian estate in Malaysia of more than 80 hectares, MIE Agro Farm deployed more than 20 LoRaWan soil sensors from Seeed Studio across 6000 trees (www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2020/11/23/smart-durian-farming-the-differentiator-code-by-mie/). Durian demands tight temperature and humidity control, and managers previously spent two hours a day checking trees on foot. Real-time soil and environmental data, on sensors lasting beyond three years with gateway coverage up to 10km, replaced those daily walks, freed staff for plant-health work and built the estate’s first data benchmark for durian cultivation.

In Bulgaria, a large-scale producer of watermelons and cabbages struggled with under-watering and over-watering across wide fields (tektelic.com/projects/optimizing-water-usage-in-agriculture-with-lorawan/). Loren Networks deployed Tektelic Kiwi agriculture sensors measuring soil moisture, temperature, humidity and light, feeding a single platform that growers monitor from a phone. With real-time field data replacing guesswork, water is matched to each area’s actual needs, improving crop health while cutting cost and waste. The rugged sensors carry up to ten years of battery life for low maintenance.

On a single LoRaWan, growers can run soil moisture, temperature and nutrient monitoring, precision irrigation and valve control, weather and microclimate stations, frost and storm alerts, and greenhouse or polytunnel climate control.

The same network can also support water management across reservoirs, tanks, troughs, pumps and flow meters, as well as animal-health monitoring, grain silo and cold-store conditions, fuel and tank levels, and fence, gate and equipment security. It can even extend to beehive and pollination monitoring, and aquaculture water quality.

Because LoRaWan is an open standard, a farm can start with a single application and add more over time on the same network, with no new infrastructure.

“The opportunity in smart agriculture is to turn isolated fields into connected, intelligent environments,” said Yegin. “When environmental data become action, agriculture gets more productive, more sustainable and more resilient, at scale.”

For more information, see lora-alliance.org/event/precision-at-scale-where-lorawan-wins-in-agriculture/.