Antalya Provincial Agriculture and Forestry Directorate
Agricultural operations cover large distances with no infrastructure and often no reliable mobile coverage, and lone working carries real safety risk. TechnoRF designs radio and telemetry for farms, greenhouses and livestock sites; two of our 48 references are provincial agriculture and forestry directorates.
Agricultural operations have a communication profile shared with almost nothing else: large distances, no infrastructure, unreliable mobile coverage, seasonal peaks in workload, and machinery that makes lone working genuinely dangerous.
Open agricultural land is one of the easier coverage environments once an antenna has height. The radio horizon in kilometres is approximately 4.12 × √h with h in metres, applied at both ends — a repeater on a 20 m mast on a rise reaches most holdings comfortably.
VHF is usually the right band: it propagates better over terrain and through vegetation than UHF, and open ground is where that advantage shows. Buildings — sheds, packing halls, feed plants — favour UHF, so mixed operations occasionally need both.
Terrain is the constraint that matters. Valleys and ridges shadow, and the fix is a surveyed repeater position rather than a more powerful radio.
| Operation | Use |
|---|---|
| Field and machinery work | Coordinating tractors, harvesters, sprayers, transport |
| Livestock facilities | Feeding, health checks, calving and lambing, veterinary calls |
| Greenhouses | Climate and irrigation faults, harvest coordination, staff dispersed under cover |
| Packing and cold stores | Loading, quality, transport coordination |
| Irrigation | Pump and valve operation, telemetry instead of a drive |
| Security and night patrol | Perimeter, stores, machinery, livestock |
The safety case for radio on a farm is stronger than most operators assume. Agricultural work involves machinery entanglement, livestock injury, chemical exposure, working at height and vehicle overturns — frequently with nobody in sight.
Lone-worker and man-down alarms are the direct answer: an automatic alarm on inactivity or on the radio going horizontal, reaching everyone on the group with a position. On a holding where the nearest colleague may be two kilometres away, that is the difference between a fast response and one that starts when someone notices an absence.
Irrigation pumps, tank and reservoir levels, valve positions, greenhouse climate, weather stations and cold-store temperatures all report values that today are read by driving to them. Telemetry payloads are tiny and can share the radio infrastructure or run on a dedicated low-power network. See IoT connectivity.
Dust, water, mud, chemicals and impact mean IP67 as a minimum. Charging arrangements need to suit a farm rather than an office — vehicle chargers and multi-way units in the yard. Seasonal peaks are handled with rental rather than by buying for the maximum. And a licence is required for professional frequencies; TechnoRF prepares the BTK application. Get in touch.
Usually VHF. Open agricultural land with few buildings is exactly where VHF’s better propagation over terrain and vegetation pays off, and the ranges involved are longer than the distances UHF handles well without infrastructure. UHF becomes the better choice inside sheds, packing halls and feed plants, so mixed operations sometimes need both bands or a repeater linking them.
Rarely, and inconsistently. Rural coverage has holes exactly where fieldwork happens, and even where a phone works, a one-to-one call is the wrong tool for coordinating machinery — nobody else hears it, it takes time to place, and it cannot be answered while operating equipment. Radio is instant, hands-free with the right accessory, and heard by everyone who needs it.
Handset to handset in open terrain, several kilometres. With a repeater on a high point, the whole holding — the radio horizon is roughly 4.12 × the square root of antenna height in metres, so a 20 m mast sees about 18 km before terrain is taken into account. Hills and valleys reduce that, which is why a repeater site is chosen by survey rather than by convenience.
Yes. Telemetry payloads from pumps, valves, tank levels and weather stations are tiny, and a DMR system can carry them alongside voice for a modest number of endpoints. Beyond that a dedicated low-power network is cheaper and better behaved. Either way the value is the same: not driving to a site to read a number.
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