--- title: "Agriculture, explained | Nexus Observatory" description: "Interactive explainer: agriculture and food in 3D, chapter by chapter: water demand, from one station, irrigate before the crop feels it…" url: https://observatory.global/industries/agriculture/explainer/ publisher: Nexus Observatory Inc. updated: 2026-11-02 --- 01 Agromet network Agriculture · Sector explainer # Soil, water and weather, field by field. Farm weather stations, irrigation, frost protection, livestock and parametric-insurance networks. Six scenes, each a working calculation: evapotranspiration to FAO-56, the root-zone water balance, frost inversions, canal flow, collar battery life over LoRa and the station density behind an index-insurance contract. **Scenarios**: 5 **Live calculations**: 6 **Community fit**: Strong **01** Agromet network **02** Soil water and the trigger **03** Frost and inversions **04** Irrigation district **05** Livestock and rangeland **06** Index insurance **07** Proof **01** · Agromet network Scenario ## Water demand, from one station. Compact stations and soil probes feeding irrigation, disease and frost models. The station measures the five inputs of the FAO-56 Penman–Monteith equation, here for a site at 50° N and 300 m in mid-July; the mid-season crop coefficient turns reference evapotranspiration into each crop's daily water use. Crop, mid-season **Reference evapotranspiration ET₀**: 5.3 mm/day **Crop coefficient (Maize (grain))**: 1.20 **Crop water use ETc = Kc · ET₀**: 6.3 mm/day **Net radiation Rn**: 14.2 MJ/m²/day **Vapour pressure deficit**: 1.18 kPa **Water over a 40 ha block**: 2,524 m³/day **02** · Soil water and the trigger Scenario ## Irrigate before the crop feels it. Probes at four depths track the water left in the root zone. The trigger fires when depletion passes the readily available water, the share the crop can draw without stress, so water arrives before yield is lost. Total available water is 1000 (θFC − θWP) Zr; the crop draws 55 % of it without stress. Soil texture **Total available water TAW**: 117 mm **Readily available water RAW (p = 0.55)**: 64 mm **Root-zone depletion Dr**: 36 mm **Root-zone water content**: 21.0 % vol **Days to the trigger**: 4.7 days **Irrigation to refill**: 36 mm · 360 m³/ha Depletion against TAW; the red mark is RAW. **03** · Frost and inversions Scenario ## On a still night, warm air sits overhead. Dense inversion-aware temperature sensors and wind-machine triggers. Radiation frost leaves colder air at bud height than ten metres up. A wind machine mixes that warmer layer down; it only helps when the inversion is strong enough, so sensors at both heights decide, against the grower's two settings for the bud stage. **Temperature at 10 m**: 1.4 °C **Alarm at 1.5 m**: On **Wind machine**: Run **Warm air available above bud height**: 2.6 °C **04** · Irrigation district Scenario ## Every canal, metered. Canal level and flow, soil moisture and pump control over private LTE or low-power radio. A level sensor in a lined channel gives discharge through Manning's equation, Q = (1/n) A R^⅔ S^½; the district sees deliveries per gate instead of estimates. Lining (Manning n) **Discharge Q**: 0.97 m³/s **Mean velocity**: 0.79 m/s **Hydraulic radius**: 0.383 m **Volume per day**: 84.2 ML **Area irrigated at 6 mm/day**: 1,403 ha **05** · Livestock and rangeland Scenario ## A collar that lasts the season. Position collars and water-trough sensors over low-power radio. Battery life is set by airtime: the spreading factor that reaches the gateway, the payload, the GNSS fix and how often each collar reports. Spreading factor **Time on air per report**: 185 ms **US915 dwell limit, 400 ms**: Within **Average current**: 377 µA **Battery life**: 941 days · 2.6 years **Reports per collar per day**: 48 **06** · Index insurance Scenario ## Density decides the basis risk. Station density and tamper evidence for index insurance. An index pays on the station's reading, not the farm's loss. The farther the farm from its station, the larger the gap between the two, so the network is sized by distance to the nearest station: on a square grid the mean is 0.383 times the spacing. Every reading carries the station's identity and calibration, so tampering shows. **Station spacing (square grid)**: 16.7 km **Mean distance, farm to nearest station**: 6.4 km **Farthest point from a station**: 11.8 km **Area per station**: 278 km² **07** · Proof Evidence ## What the buyer checks. Each item a cooperative, a ministry or an insurer asks for is produced by the grid as a record: calibration, uptime, battery state and data terms travel with every value. Show the record for **Asked for**: Agronomic model validation **Record kept**: Model run against held-out station data, error per crop and season **—** Proof ## What buyers in agriculture ask to see. The grid produces each item as a record with the data it supports, not a report written afterwards. **01** Agronomic model validation **02** sensor accuracy specification **03** battery life **04** a local-language app **05** data-ownership terms ### Bring us the site. Tell us the site, the sector and what you need to observe. We bring the survey, the design and the crew. [Talk to us](https://observatory.global/contact/) [Sector overview](https://observatory.global/sectors/agriculture/) [Nexus Observatory](https://observatory.global/)**Agriculture and food** . 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