农民们的主要关切是作物产量不稳定。尽管温室为作物生长提供了可控的环境，但却无法避免病虫害。此外，农民缺乏对农场土壤状态的了解，也会导致一些未来的困难。作物所施的肥料量通常由农民自行决定。这通常会导致用药过量或不足，直接影响到作物生长。人为错误对作物产量的影响最大，灌溉效率低下或不稳定以及施肥错误会对作物健康产生严重的负面影响。
In the past five years, farmers in the Cameron Highlands, which are located 250 kilometers from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, have taken the initiative to implement a simple monitoring system for their farms’ soil health. However, cost and connectivity presented a serious challenge for the farmers. Smarter solutions and machine-to-machine (M2M) services are often expensive and not available in rural areas. End users, typically the farmers themselves, are naturally very concerned with a solution’s power consumption, availability and reliability, as these factors directly affect the cost to deploy and operate these solutions. For the Cameron Highlands, the region’s various hills and valleys created additional challenges for service providers and reduced network signal strength. As a result, the farmers turned to solutions based on Semtech’s LoRa® devices and the LoRaWAN® protocol.
