Precision agriculture is getting widely accepted across the world. It helps farmers choose the best suitable crops with higher yields based on soil analysis and opting for lucrative markets. The automatic relevant data is captured to measure the performance in the field. Precision agriculture aims to increase the farm’s environmental and economic sustainability. It allows farmers to react to climate changes proactively by predicting extreme events in advance. To achieve these objectives, precision agriculture solutions use various latest technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, data analytics and computer vision.
IoT in agriculture provides in-depth situation awareness in farms to increase automation in complex and process-related farming activities. It also provides data for a broad understanding of the entire food production value chain to guide stakeholders to make strategic decisions. IoT in agriculture offers new possibilities and opportunities for focused uses leading to precise and justified decisions for food production and farmer’s benefits. IoT-based precision agriculture contributes:
Novel innovations in understanding crop and soil situations
Savings of natural resources like water and energy, investments and costs on farms
Expands precision agriculture possibilities
Increases environmental awareness in farming processes
Provides automation solutions to ease complicated field activities like irrigation, chemical spraying, harvesting and so forth
Provides IoT-based data for large-scale analysis for private and public use
Precision agriculture highly depends on the efficiency of agricultural technologies. Some of the IoT-based precision agriculture technologies include:
Sensors and actuators to collect data remotely
Machine learning to analyse the data
Big data techniques for efficient processing and analysis of data
Innovative applications on IoT platforms for precision agriculture methods and techniques
Management solutions such as farm management software and hardware platforms
Wireless technologies and communication networks for data or information transfer
The use cases of IoT in precision agriculture include all activities in the agriculture life cycle, such as climate monitoring, cattle monitoring, crop monitoring, and greenhouse automation. Farmers can track and predict weather conditions based on data received from weather stations. Connected devices are used to collect insights to manage farms, such as crop selection and climate mapping. Crop monitoring is crucial for increased productivity and overall profit margin for farmers. Greenhouse management can be optimised with the help of IoT in agriculture. Livestock is one of the fundamental agri-related businesses for small landholders. IoT in agriculture is not limited to the field but also provides solutions for livestock management and health. IoT-based precision agriculture is not too expensive o develop, give impressive insight and is easy to maintain.