Small Satellite Tracker Foreseen as Game-Changer in Global Agriculture Industry.
Globalstar, Inc., today announced its partnership with Ceres Tag, a leader in livestock information systems using a proprietary smart ear tag, to conduct its final stages of commercial large-scale trials for the provenance and management of livestock.
These trials will be a significant scale extension of previous trials performed by Ceres Tag on 100 animals in North Queensland, Australia in early 2019.
The Globalstar and Ceres Tag partnership aims to improve efficiencies within the agriculture industry with benefits including livestock theft detection, better operational management for livestock location, improved provenance along the entire supply chain, improved detection and tracking for health and bio-security systems and more information on animal welfare.
Ceres Tag will commence large scale trials in Australia in multiple environmental and climatic conditions to test and validate the operational proficiency of its complete livestock information platform which has been a collaboration with Meat & Livestock Australia, Queensland Government, Commonwealth Science Industry Research Organization (CSIRO), James Cook University and Clandestine Design Group. Once trials are complete, Ceres Tag is expecting to enter the market in the second half of 2020.
“After partnering with Ceres Tag and CSIRO, we’ve been able to collaboratively produce an exciting and extremely small design using our Commercial IoT technology,” said David Kagan, CEO of Globalstar, Inc. “With no other infrastructure necessary on a ranch, this simple attach-and-go ear tag significantly reduces any installation headaches and provides great value to livestock farmers.”
David Smith, CEO of Ceres Tag, said:
“Ceres Tag’s capability for global provenance, traceability, health and welfare detection using the Globalstar Satellite Network will provide a new paradigm in risk reduction and transparency for the livestock industry. This new offering will provide benefits for all stakeholders from Paddock to Plate.”
“With mandated traceability tagging already implemented in many countries with many more adopting the practice in the future, including the USA, Ceres Tag will be unrivalled in delivering a new confidence to consumers while vastly improving farming operations.”
With a cattle population in excess of 1.2 billion in the world, often residing in remote agriculture environments, interest has been extensive for better communications to more effectively manage livestock operations. The collaboration between Globalstar and Ceres Tag is significant in that it is based on Globalstar’s proprietary IoT chipset that provides dependable, global connectivity by using satellite communications, enabled by Globalstar’s second-generation Low Earth Orbit satellite fleet.
The final product resulting from this partnership will be a small, lightweight ear tag applicable to a variety of livestock as well as other wildlife animals. Because of its flexibility, the ear tag will benefit not only the global agriculture industry, but also Governments seeking to improve their provenance and bio-security systems, finance and insurance institutions seeking to reduce risk, trading platforms seeking transparency, animal health company diagnostics for improved data driven decisions, retailers for food safety and security of final consumer products and many more along the complete supply chain network.
