Smart farming has been part of agricultural evolutions with agri technology since around 1980’s. This was the time when technical innovations in agriculture started coming in the market, but due to the lack of awareness regarding technology, it’s use and proof of enhancement in results, farmers tend to continue with traditional farming. But, with proven capabilities of new agri technologies farmers have started welcoming new trends in agriculture such as smart farming. In developing countries like India, agriculture is a major sector for generating employment as well as increasing the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The contribution of agriculture in GDP is estimated to 14%, but it involves around 50% of the people in the nation. Hence, there is a need to develop such ecosystems which will improve the farming processes and outcomes.

Smart farming includes application of agri technology for crop inspection, storage observing, vehicle tracing, irrigation and livestock management etc. The role of agri technology is to maximize efficiency of irrigation management, cost minimization on operational factors, minimization of waste, distinction in inter and intra crop varieties, determining the planting and harvesting period of crop, pest control and other protective measures through observation. With the optimized procedures and management on crops throughout the nurturing, the yield gained from smart farming is more if compared to the existing agriculture methodologies.

Agri technology can be products, services or applications derived from agriculture to improve various input/output processes such as yield, efficiency and profitability. Not only in agriculture but, agri technology is applied in horticulture as well as aquaculture, but agriculture has a huge market for agri technology. Agriculture depends on various factors such as climate, soil, crop and its nurturement, and thus it is unpredictable in every aspect from yield from fields to profits obtained from the market. But, agri technology has provided farmers a better control over the processes of raising livestocks and growing crops, making it more predictable and profitable. Due to a number of technological transformations in the last few decades, agriculture is becoming more industrialized and technology-driven.

Agri technology consists of many types of technologies such as drones satellite photography and sensors, IoT-based sensor networks, phase tracking, weather forecasts, automated irrigation, light and heat control, intelligent software analysis for pest and disease prediction, soil management and other involved analytical tasks, biotech. Smart farming utilizes these technologies to analyse, control, manage and to take data-driven decisions of activities like seeding to harvesting in farming and market research and predictions. Thus, agri technology is an indivisible part of smart farming worldwide and especially in the developing countries to face challenges dealing in the development of the food and agriculture sector to mitigate hunger.