How does the Internet of Things (IoT) contribute to the use of smart agriculture and how does it look in real life?
Smart agriculture IoT, as well as industrial IoT in general, aren’t as popular as consumer connected devices; yet the market is still very dynamic. The aim is to improve nearly every facet of production and management to eventually lead to higher revenue. Self-driving tractor and robotic implements are no longer a sci-fi fantasy but an everyday occurrence.
The adoption of IoT solutions for agriculture is constantly growing. Business Intelligence predicts that the number of agriculture IoT device installations will hit 75 million by 2020, growing by 20% annually. At the same time, the global smart agriculture market size is expected to triple by 2025.
Smart agriculture is mostly used to denote the application of IoT solutions in agriculture. The same applies to the smart farming definition. What does the application look like in real life?
MONITORING CLIMATE
Weather stations are probably the most popular smart agriculture gadgets, combining various smart farming sensors. Whether open field or greenhouses, technology made it simple and affordable to locate stations across fields, farms or each greenhouse to collect data which can be used to map the climate conditions, choose the appropriate crops and take the required measures to improve their capacity (i.e. precision farming).
CROP MANAGEMENT
Precision farming entails crop management devices that should be placed in the field to collect data specific to crop farming, e.g. temperature, precipitation, leaf water potential, nutrients status, soil moisture con tent and overall crop health. Thus, you can monitor your crop growth and any anomalies to effectively prevent any diseases or infestations that can harm your yield.
ANIMAL MONITORING AND MANAGEMENT
There are IoT agriculture sensors that can be attached to the animals on a farm to monitor their health and log performance. Measuring temperature, activity and grazing patterns can give health and nutrition insights on each individual animal as well as collective information about the herd.
INFRASTRUCTURE
• Monitor water tank levels remotely.
• Monitor trough and creek levels as well as flow rates.
• Observe not only the filling level, temperature and humidity, but also rotting and pest infestation in grain silos.
END-TO-END FARM MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
The so-called farm productivity management systems are a more complex approach to IoT products where several sensors are combined with powerful dashboard analytical capabilities and in-built accounting/reporting features. This offers remote farm monitoring capabilities and allows you to streamline most of the business operations. Examples of such systems are Farmlogs and Cropio.
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