4 Smart Farming Applications That Are Revolutionizing The Agriculture Industry
Taniya Arya
Content Marketing Manager at Icreon | Experience in B2B Content Creation and Content Strategy Development
For too many people, the term Internet of Things is still confined to the most popular and visible smart devices like Android Wear, Google Glass or FitBit Smart Bands for Activity Tracking & Health Monitoring. However, IoT is pervading every industry space and connecting everything for creating a better living environment. The Agriculture Industry hasn’t been left untapped either. Forward-thinking companies are moving towards
Smart Farming concepts by leveraging IoT, Big Data and M2M Technology to maximize crop yields and optimize irrigation efficiency.
As the global population is slated to touch the 9.6 billion mark by 2020, there will be a snowballing demand for food which will have to be met to sustain this growing population.
Smart farming based on IoT technologies will enable farmers to Reduce Waste and Enhance Productivity – from improving soil quality to full-fledged irrigation.
Prospering on the immense architecture of the Internet of Things, smart farming applications are making their mark with the promise to deliver round the clock visibility in:
- Soil and Crop Health
- Machinery in Use
- Animal Behavior
- Climate Monitoring and
- Storage Conditions
This blog highlights the major applications of IoT based farming that are improving agricultural efficiency.
Precision Farming: Being one of the most famous applications of IoT in the agricultural sector, precision farming provides more controlled and accurate ways of raising livestock and growing crops. In Intelligent Farming Methods, rugged and precise IoT sensors are used that allow farmers and growers to collect data on weather, soil humidity, air quality and crop maturity; enabling them to make better decisions. A company named as Cropx is using sensor devices and data to help farmers better utilize water resources. Such sensor devices are also capable of optimizing the usage of fertilizer and pesticide needed by each patch at definite intervals of time.
Agricultural Drones: In the current scenario, agriculture drones are highly utilized in the agriculture industry to enhance or improve various farming practices. Mostly ground-based and aerial drones are used for crop health assessment, crop monitoring, crop spraying, planting and land analysis. The major benefits of employing drones in farming include integrated GIS mapping, health monitoring, imaging, ease of use, saves time and most importantly promises high crop yields. By enabling farmers to create best strategy & planning based on real-time data collection and processing, Drone Technology seems to pack a lot of potential and promise in the Agriculture Sector.
Livestock Monitoring: Farmers who own large territories can utilize wireless IoT applications to gather useful information like location, well-being, and health of their cattle. This information allows them to identify sick cattle so that they can be separated from the herd, helping to curb the rapid spreading of diseases. Also, it significantly cut down the labor costs & time as farmers can locate their animals with the help of IoT based sensor devices. KritiKal Solutions, taking the IoT revolution ahead, utilizing cam-based sensors and Smart devices to build Intelligent Fodder & Stock Replenishment Solutions in agriculture space.
Smart Greenhouses: This is yet another important smart farming application that helps in improving the yield of crops. The Original Greenhouse concept uses controlled environmental parameters created using Manual Monitoring & Interference or Proportional Control Methods; to allow an optimized environment for crop/plant growth. Smart Greenhouses are an upgrade which use IoT Sensors to intelligently monitor & control the internal climatic conditions; saving manual labor costs, production losses and energy. One can create Cloud Servers in order to remotely access the system when it is connected using IoT.
Way Ahead to Smart Farming:
We are rapidly stepping into an era of hi-tech agriculture wherein there is a host of opportunities for Technologists to completely transform the Farming Ecosystem. They can open up extremely productive ways to improve the Quality of Soil, Raise Livestock with the use of affordable sensors and then make well-informed decisions basis data analytics, which in turn would improve operational efficiency. Thus, with the installation of Smart Technologies, both small farmers and large landowners can increase efficiency and sustainability in their crop productions.