Innovators of Things: How OneSoil uses cellular connectivity to increase yields for farmers

Traditionally, farmers work in the field, understanding their crops based on years of experience. With developments in technology, farmers now have the tools they need to make informed decisions that will help them optimize their operations, reduce waste, and increase their profits.

Zurich-based OneSoil, equips farmers with applications with real-time data and analytics to enable precision farming. Specifically, OneSoil accesses satellite data to detect the crops in arable land and build productivity zones. From there, they can better understand limiting factors and determine which fields can apply variable rate technology to improve crop yields.

With this knowledge, farmers can conduct an experiment leveraging cellular connectivity. After creating a prescription map in the OneSoil Yield app, farmers can send them to a cellularly-connected OneSoil modem attached to their equipment. This enables farmers to follow the map to conduct the experiment and quickly route the data from the equipment back to the app.

Cellular connectivity that just works

When OneSoil was looking for a connectivity solution, they had a few requirements. First off, it needed to be cellular in order to ensure connectivity on farms. Secondly, it needed to connect globally as the company started in Europe but has expanded to Latin America, North America, Africa, and Australia. Lastly, it needed to connect right out of the box for their farmers. With each of these requirements, Hologram was a perfect fit.

Matvey Sidorin, OneSoil’s hardware manager noted “Hologram’s Hyper SIM card has given us the reliable connectivity we need to help our farmers increase their yield. Although we started in Europe, we’ve been able to quickly expand across the globe knowing that our modems will be able to connect wherever they are.”

Increased yields across the globe

For one farmer in the Czech Republic, they’ve adopted the OneSoil apps to use it for crop scouting and share pictures and notes during the process. This way, they can map the machinery’s routes during field operations, as well as create variable rate application maps. They’ve also leveraged the OneSoil modem, powered by Hologram, to provide connectivity for their tractors that don’t have remote access.

Leveraging the learnings from the app, the farmer has been able to increase their yields on average by 48%.

OneSoil has also done great work in using satellites to optimize resources for Ukrainian farmers during the war.