The Growing Sussex Project was one of a select number of regions to successfully bid for and be awarded additional funding from DSIT. The project will benefit from an additional £700,000 as well as receive an extension which has been granted to 31 March 2026.
The funding will be used to support two additional use cases that will utilise the private 5G networks now being built at the two specialist agricultural colleges which include:
Plumpton New Vineyard – UK first in monitoring the conditions and requirements necessary for optimum planting and maintenance of a new vineyard. This will support the generation of a new dataset which will be of interest to Viticulture sector generally as well as support the expansion of the sector locally in Sussex, specifically deepening knowledge of land value and worth.
Brinsbury New Agriculture Use Case – this use case will support the automatic identification and milk yield monitoring of a unique breed of Dairy Shorthorn cattle and will support the creation of bespoke data that will benefit commercial cattle feed providers.
The project is buying connectivity over a minimum of three years to enable the use cases to be fully deployed and a commercial model for investment at scale across the sector to be developed.
GROWING SUSSEX
Led by West Sussex County Council and funded by DSIT, Growing Sussex is an exciting project to advance digital technology and data-driven decision making in food, wine and plant production.
