Internet-of-Things (IoT)-Based Smart Agriculture

The rapid emergence of the Internet-of-Things (IoT) based technologies redesigned almost every industry including “smart agriculture” which moved the industry from statistical to quantitative approaches. Such revolutionary changes are changing the existing agriculture methods and creating new opportunities along with a range of challenges.

But the problem is that only a limited portion of the earth’s surface is suitable for agriculture. Also, its use is limited due to various factors, like temperature, climate, topography, soil quality, and even
most of the suitable areas are not homogenous.

Secondly, the available agricultural land is further shaped by political and economic factors, like land and climate patterns and population density, while rapid urbanization is constantly posting threats to the availability of arable land. Further examination showed that every crop field has different characteristics that can be measured separately in terms of both quality and quantity. Critical characteristics, like soil type, nutrient presence, low irrigation, pest resistance, etc., dene its suitability and capability for a specific crop.

If looking closely, one feels that the current applications are only scratching the surface and that the real impact of IoT and its uses are not yet witnessed. Researchers and engineers around the globe are proposing different methods and architectures and based on that suggested a variety of equipment to monitor and fetch the information regarding crop status during different stages, considering numerous crop and field types.

Focusing on the market demand, many leading manufacturers are providing a range of sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), robots, communication devices, and other heavy machinery to deliver the sensed data. In addition, various commissions, food and agriculture organizations, and government bodies are developing policies and guidelines to observe and regulate the use of these technologies in order to maintain food and environment safety.

Wireless sensors placed strategically around fields are providing farmers with up-to-date information in real-time, allowing them to adapt the care that the crops need, which results in higher food production with less waste. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are also being used to inform farmers about nearly all aspects of their crop growth as well as about the readiness state of the farm’s machinery, thus, helping in preventing loss of crop as well as enhancing the readiness of the equipment which cultivates it.
WSNs with GPS capability are helping tractors in compensating for uneven terrain and optimizing land preparation for growing crops. Recently, new advances in image recognition and digital signal processing gave even more capabilities to WSN to accurately determine crop quality and health.
In order to make agriculture sustainable, the use of the IoT will be at the center and forefront of agricultural operations.

This includes everything from water and power usage, crop transportation, farm machinery operation, maintenance alerts, and market price updates. The IoT has the capability to make these tasks streamlined and more predictable by recognizing the crop’s needs at every stage. It has already
proved a breakthrough and is further going to change the way we look at various agriculture activities by providing the farmer full control over their land and assets in an unprecedented way, thus, maximizing their effectiveness.

Further, the future of the IoT can be shaped by the phenomenal advances in WSNs and the fifth-generation (5G) of cellular mobile communication technologies to provide farmers with real-time data and information anytime and everywhere.

The focus on smarter, better, and more effective crop growing methodologies is required in order to meet the growing food demand of the increasing world population in the face of the ever-shrinking arable land.