The Agriculture Industry has seen many technological advancements over the past decade. From tractors in the 1930s to autonomous plowing vehicles in the 21st century, Agriculture is one of those industries that has always been affected by the Industrial revolution.
With the advent of Industry 4.0 (IIoT), the application of IoT (Internet of things) and the implementation of big data in the agriculture industry were expected to happen. Introduced in the 2018 World Government Summit report, Agriculture 4.0 is now the new trend of Agrictech.
Focusing on four major aspects: Demographics, Scarcity of natural resources, Climate Change, and Food waste, this report focuses on fulfilling the world food demand through implementations of Smart Agriculture.
What is Smart Agriculture? Why do we need it?
In simple terms, Smart Agriculture refers to the many application of IoT technology in agriculture. This includes everything from the use of sensors for data collection to wirelessly connected devices, real-time monitoring, predictive data analytics, and cloud platforms.
By implementing smart agricultural practices, farmers can increase overall production while decreasing the need for manpower with low production costs and high operational efficiency.
Why do we need Smart agriculture?
According to the World Summit report, the world population is projected to grow by 9.6 billion by 2050. As per the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, we will need 170% of overall world food production to fulfill the food demand.
But with heavy degradation of farmlands, currently at 25% degraded, driven by global deforestation, and constant reduction of the workforce, ever-changing climate conditions reduce overall productivity. The world needs far smarter and efficient methods to fulfill its food demands. This makes smart agriculture all so more important.
Agriculture 4.0 would focus on precision farming with agricultural automation, allowing farmers to target very specific areas while using the minimum resources required to get maximum yielding, ignoring the dependency on water, fertilizers, and pesticides.
Benefits of IoT based Smart Farming
The implementation IoT based smart farming also has several proven benefits. By using IoT in agriculture, farmers will have:
Increased production with improved yield quality: By implementing IoT driven smart farming system, farmers can regularly monitor their crop conditions in real-time. With regular feedback from IoT sensors, any major change in factors affecting the crop can be noticed and taken care of. Based on this, data-driven predictions can also be made to avoid any mishap.
Resource conservation: By automizing the process with machines powered by AI and IoT, framers can increase overall efficiency while reducing the wastage of resources. Demand-based irrigation systems, automatic fertilizers dispensers, and harvesting robots are used to reduce the need for manpower while increasing both control and precision over the process.
Improved livestock farming: Different conditions of livestock can also be monitored by using IoT-based sensors. With real-time monitoring, these sensors will allow farmers to monitor the health condition and reproduction of their livestock. Implementation of Geo-fencing is also being used for livestock management.
Reduced environmental footprint: By implementing IoT-based Smart Farming, Farmers are not just saving scarce resources like water. But with improved efficiency, the use of insecticides or pesticides is also reduced. Thanks to real-time monitoring, the application of fertilizers can also be limited only to the most needed crops.
Implementation of Smart Farming: Application of IoT in
Agriculture
While the implementation of IoT in farming has numerous benefits, the application of IoT in agriculture is limitless. Below is a list of some of those applications widely used in the current day and age and are most likely to get more famous with time.
1. Monitoring Climate condition
For a particular type of crop to grow in any area/region, it not only needs a certain type of soil or water concentration but also needs favorable climatic conditions for proper ripening.
Which is why changing climatic conditions are one the major reason for bad productivity among food crops. With variable climatic conditions, factors like humidity, temperature, underground water level, the concentration of Co2, etc. changes, affecting the quality of the yield.
To ensure that your crops are growing in the right climatic condition, IoT gadgets like weather stations are widely used to monitor climate change.
IoT devices equipped with sensors are installed both in and outside the fields to gather different types of weather-related data. Based on the data, a cloud-based computing system analyses it and converts it into relevant information for the farmers to understand.
Using the same data and patterns, the software is also able to predict upcoming weather conditions so that if needed, necessary precautions can be taken.
allMETEO's Agro IoT Weather Sensor is one of the famous Climate Monitoring devices in the market. Able to relay temperature changes every 10 minutes, this device can relay data like temperature, humidity, dew point, frost point, atmospheric pressure, solar radiation, etc.
The device is also pretty self-sufficient with 6 months of operation without any sun, while adding 20 sunless days on sunny days.
There are also other companies like Smart Elements, Pynco which are also offering similar IoT solutions.
2. Greenhouse Automation
Greenhouses are known to be the most effective method of cultivating a particular type of vegetation. Among the many factors required to grow a plant, a greenhouse offers the perfect control over all of it.
From the amount of C02 present to the sunlight, humidity, and temperature, all can be controlled inside an enclosed environment to get the most optimal condition for growing your plants. However, the control offered is limited and the practices performed could only be done based on speculation.
But, with the intervention of IoT in Greenhouse, these limitations are greatly reduced. Farmers today can get real-time data on factors like temperature, humidity, CO2, light exposure, to maintain ideal micro-climatic conditions.
At the same time, valuable insights can be gained on soil conditions including water concentration, nutrition level, etc. to increase the soil quality. Automated irrigation systems are also incorporated to keep the water level in check, and fulfill the vegetation demand in real-time while reducing physical labor.
How does the Greenhouse Automation system work?
A greenhouse system has multiple smaller systems installed across the area to create an IoT ecosystem. To grow a seasonal crop all year, an automated climate-controlled system is installed to regulate the temperatures needed. It also handles other factors like humidity, forging, shading, etc.
While one system maintains the environment, another maintains the soil. Sensors installed in soil measure EC and water content to the root level. Based on the data gatherd an automated irrigation system waters the crops as needed. Similarly, a feeder also feeds fertilizers to the most needed plants.
Several IoT companies like Autogrow, Agriplast, Greentech are currently provided Greenhouse automation solutions across the world.
3. Precision Farming
Precision Farming, also known as Satellite Farming or Site-Specific Crop Management is the modern type of farming. It is a type of agricultural practice, where nothing is arbitrary or based on mere speculation. Rather anything or everything is done based purely on data collected while each action taken is controlled precisely to every plant.
It is a technology-enabled approach to farming management that observes, measures and analyzes the need of individual field and crops".
Precision agriculture is a concept based on intra-field variation which utilizes new tech like GPS, GNS, satellite imagery incorporated with big data and IoT, to get the most precise and efficient form of agriculture.
But what does it all mean? To understand it better let's take an example.
Suppose you have a big land that you have been cultivating with the traditional farming methods. To cultivate the crop you plow the field, irrigate it, plant the seeds, add fertilizers, etc. But everything done is purely based on experience and external factors that are noticeable. As in lack of water, adding pesticides to control pests, or adding more fertilizers.
However, several internal factors affect productivity. With precision farming, all these factors can be taken into account to get the maximum possible yield with minimum effort.
A big piece of land will have variable topography, with varying nutrition levels of the soil. Some areas would have higher crop density, while some would be comparatively low. Similarly, plants in some are would need fewer fertilizers while some would need more. If the field is slightly sloped, the water level would also vary in different parts of the field as well.
For a farmer to take account of all these factors is humanely impossible, hence the concept of precision farming is implemented.
How does Precision agriculture work?
The very first step in precision agriculture is to observe and analyze the variability in crops. This helps understand the variation in yield in different areas. Depending on the evaluation, the causes of variability can be found to improve crop management.
Sensors are installed in the soil to monitor humidity and nutrition levels. Satellite images and robotic drones provide live images of individual plants. Any area with bad productivity can easily be detected with sensors providing other valuable insights. Based on a which, farmers can identify and fix the problem immediately.
The data gathered also allows growers to take precise actions when needed. Such as what part of the field to water, when or what crop to sow, how much fertilizer to add, what type of fertilizer to add, where to add pesticides etc. With precision farming, a farmer always has a very detailed understanding of his field and what's going on with it.
This not only ensures high productivity, but also saves a lot of time, money, and resource. As the geo-spatial technology expands even further, Precision agriculture would grow as well. After all, it is the future of Farming.
4. Livestock monitoring and Management
Livestock management and monitoring are turning out to be another area where IoT is heavily applied. Herders and livestock farmers are using sensor-based IoT devices for active cattle monitoring. IoT-enabled devices are used to track the health and growth of livestock.
In traditional farming, where every cattle were inspected individually required a lot of time and manpower while it was still highly unreliable as nothing was predicted just by looking. However, with IoT-enabled farming, guesswork is out of the picture.
Now farmers can check both the health and location of each animal, constantly track their movement and take actions if required. With sensors implanted on the animals, any alarming body activity as in temperature rise, change in heart rate is immediately highlighted by the software. The animal can also be pinpointed thanks to geo-tracking.
It is also so incredibly sensitive than cattle that are ready to mate or are pregnant can also be pinpointed based on body temperature variation.
This also works as a new non-lethal method of fencing using the application of geo-fencing. A particular area is marked in which the cattle are left. If any animal crosses the marked boundary, a notification is immediately sent to the owner.
5. End-to-End Farm Management System
An end-to-end farm management system is a combination of all types of IoT-enabled agricultural tech. It is a system designed to monitor, manage, analyze the overall farming eco-system while using historical data and pattern to make predict
In the end farm management system, farmers are not only using individual IoT devices. As in weather stations, automatic irrigation systems, or soil monitors. But they establish a whole eco-system of IoT-enabled devices over a large area that includes both crop and livestock management.
With a combined implementation of IoT, End-to-End Farm Management System has proven to be an incredible concept. Thanks to Machine learning and AI, the data gathered is analyzed to make future based predictions.
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