Elucidating the impact of IoT in the agriculture industry.

The proliferation of smartphones is giving the rapid rise of the internet of things (IoT). The impact of the technology has on everywhere, everything across all industries. It is extensively sweeping its potential in agriculture, reshaping the sector of how farmers perform farming. Already, robots in agriculture, commonly known as Agribots, are gaining prominence among farmers and meeting the demand of laborers across the globe. These smart robots assist agriculturists with everything, including removing weed, picking fruits, monitoring soil and crop monitoring, etc. 

Since the industry is increasingly shifting from traditional farming to digital, IoT is playing a key role. The Industrial IoT has been a driving force behind improved agricultural production at a lower cost. Experts believe that the use of smart solutions driven by IoT will strengthen the agriculture operations in the coming years. The need to fulfill the ever-growing demand of foods for an unprecedentedly rising world’s population is making the urgency of IoT inevitable. 

Let’s explore the IoT applications in agriculture redefining the industry and poised to bring connected farming.

Data Collection

Conventional database systems are not able to analyze large amounts of data as they do not have enough storage for the data collected from the IoT sensors. The evolution of cloud-based data storage systems and an end-to-end IoT platform now have made it possible to glean voluminous data, assess them, and excerpt valuable information that helps agriculture firms or farmers. Sensors are the primary source of data collection on a large scale, and then can be evaluated using data analytics tools. These data can be anything, such as weather tracking, livestock and crop conditions and more.

Real-Time Asset Monitoring

IoT in agriculture has the potential to track run hours and schedule preventative maintenance reminders for equipment. It can help in livestock tracking using secure battery-powered GPS devices for location updates, movement history, geofencing, and more. With IoT, real-time soil moisture monitoring would be possible, enhancing crop conditions, efficiency and crop yields. The technology can also alert farmers in real-time when potential failures arise, eradicating the requirement for in-depth, hands-on diagnosis.

Precision Agriculture

Precision farming has become a new normal in agriculture. This farming approach enables farmers to generate data through sensors and assess the information to gauge current practices and make improvements for greater efficiency and effectiveness. IoT in this scenario is paying key roles, change the way farmers work through precision farming. It allows for real-time monitoring to accumulate valuable data that can have a significant impact on operational efficiency. It also helps measure and responds to inter and intra-field variability in crops.

Smart Greenhouses

The use of sensors in agriculture can help measure the environmental parameters according to the plant requirement. These sensors are being used for controlling the environment in a smart greenhouse. A technique that enhances the yield of crops, vegetables, fruits, etc, greenhouse farming controls environmental parameters in two ways, either through manual intervention or a proportional control mechanism. By integrating IoT embedded systems, a smart greenhouse not only monitors intelligently but also controls the climate, eventually eliminating any need of human intervention.

End-to-End Farm Management

Farmers have already begun implementing high-tech farming tools and technologies to improve the efficiency of their day-to-day work. IoT is already proving the most productive form of a technological revolution in the sector, and a more complex approach to this technology products in farming can be represented by farm productivity management systems. These management systems typically encompass numerous agriculture IoT devices and sensors, installed on the premises in addition to a powerful dashboard with analytical capabilities and in-built accounting/reporting features. It generally helps in remote farm monitoring and allows farmers to streamline most of the business operations.