Farm intelligence at scale with Cowal Agriculture

Across an aggregation the size of Cowal's Emerald operation, the challenge was never a lack of data. It was knowing what to do with it and acting before the window to do so closed.

The Central Highlands' sub-tropical climate raises the stakes on every scheduling decision. Close to half the region's average annual rainfall of 636mm falls in summer, and the margin between capturing that value and being caught out by it moves fast. Across 4,450 hectares of production, that's exactly the moment Goanna Ag is built for and the moment that first brought Cowal to the platform.

That moment arrived when Cowal's existing soil moisture probes became unreliable. The risk wasn't just missing information, it was missing the window to act on it.

"We transitioned to the Goanna Ag’s GoField soil moisture probes when our older C-probes became unreliable," said Greg Kauter from Cowal Agriculture. "We found the uplift in management information was immediate, especially in forecasting crop water use and scheduling irrigations.”

GoField is Goanna Ag's irrigation management solution. It brings together in-field soil moisture probes, crop canopy temperature sensing, weather and climate data, and crop-specific growth models to turn raw sensor readings into a clear, timely recommendation on when, where and how much to irrigate.

The introduction of crop canopy temperature sensing has given the Cowal team a new layer of insight, reading soil moisture alongside crop development for a fuller picture of plant stress and performance.

"The GoField probe data has continued to improve with the addition of the crop canopy temperature sensor in recent seasons, which allows us to better match soil moisture profiles with crop development metrics," said Greg.

All of that sensor data converges in Goanna Ag's redesigned GoApp dashboard, giving Cowal's team the ability to prioritise the information and the fields that matter most, right when they matter.

"The new dashboard is really well laid out and easy to interpret, with very useful forecasting of ETc, daily water use and rainfall," Greg notes.

At Cowal they can have a large number of fields in production in strong allocation seasons, and being able to schedule irrigations more precisely provides an edge for operational planning and staff rostering.

"This makes precision irrigation scheduling critical to capitalising on average rainfall to boost irrigation efficiency, while managing any climate impacts from summer rainfall," Greg adds.

"The Goanna Ag data compilation for each moisture probe allows us to make the best-informed decisions for how the season is progressing."

What began as a probe replacement has grown into a fully integrated intelligence layer across all eight farms. Cowal has progressively added on-farm weather stations for site-specific climate data, remote rainfall and channel monitoring, and fuel storage sensors to the network, unifying everything through the GoApp.

"We have continued to build our Goanna Ag sensor network to include GoWeather stations, GoRain, GoChannel and GoFuel sensors that can be accessed from a single web or app portal by our farm staff, allowing real time monitoring wherever they are and whatever they're doing. This gives us quality site-specific feedback on effective rainfall, crop water use, and temperature and day degrees progress."

For an operation running across eight properties, that matters. It's not another reporting tool sitting on top of the farm. It's a single, connected picture that puts the right information in front of the right person, in the paddock, in the ute, or back at the office.

Cowal Agriculture's partnership with Goanna Ag has evolved from a single point fix into a farm-wide intelligence network, one that gives every member of the team clear, precise, and confident decisions, at the moments that matter most, across all eight properties and 4,450 hectares of production.