by Mat Dirjish

The LoRa Alliance, a non-profit organization promoting the Long Range Wide-Area Network (LoRaWAN) standard, claims that LoRaWAN has become the connectivity method of choice for smart agriculture. The organization explains agriculture is possibly one of the hardest environments to connect because its fields, animals, and other assets sit beyond the reach of main power or reliable networks.

As per Alper Yegin, CEO of the LoRa Alliance, “LoRaWAN is winning in the Smart Agriculture market because it reaches where farming actually happens. 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, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth.” LoRaWAN features that outperform LPWAN technology include:

• Long range: a single gateway covers miles-/kilometers-wide fields and pastures.
• Low power: sensors and tags run for years on small or solar batteries.
• Low cost: it uses a free, unlicensed spectrum with no SIMs, spectrum fees, or per-device data plans.
• Highest accessibility: for distributed outdoor sites, it is more convenient to deploy than cellular, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Farmers can roll out their own networks in remote regions, far from existing infrastructure.
• Satellite backing: where terrestrial coverage runs out, satellite connectivity extends the same network to the most remote fields.
• Most robust ecosystem: more than 650 LoRaWAN Certified devices from more than 334 LoRa Alliance members give growers the broadest range of sensors and gateways of any LPWAN technology.
• Widest global adoption: 125 million-plus devices connected via LoRaWAN at the end of 2025.

On one LoRaWAN network, farmers can monitor soil moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels, as well as irrigation, valve control, weather and microclimate stations, frost and storm alerts, and greenhouse or polytunnel climate control. Additionally, one network enables water management, animal-health monitoring, and other monitoring capabilities such as beehive and pollination monitoring.

As LoRaWAN is an open standard, a farm can start with a single application and add more over time on the same network without additional infrastructure. For deeper details, visit the LoRa Alliance website.

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