Do Farming in a Productive Way with Smart Agriculture Technology

Introduction

The concept of smart farming is quickly catching up across the globe. It is an innovative way by which farmers manage their farms using different futuristic technologies like drones, AI, IoT, and robotics. These technological strategies help them to increase the quantity and quality of their crops and also helps in optimizing the human effort in the process of farming.

IoT (Internet of things) is playing a major role in modern farming. It makes farming easier by creating a way of measuring and understanding the demand for fertilizers and irrigation facilities required on the farm. If you want to know more about IoT; then you can read our article on IoT and know more about it and its importance in different fields. 

In this article, we are introducing you to a more advanced way of doing farming. It is an emerging concept which utilizes the power of technology to manage a farm successfully. It is done with the help of modern information and communication technologies to enhance the quantity and quality of products while reducing the need for human efforts. Smart agriculture is also known as the Third Green Revolution and it is changing the way people do farming.

The Third Green Revolution is spreading its reach over the agriculture field. That includes plant breeding and genetic revolutions which are based on the combined application of ICT solutions, for example, the use of precision equipment, sensors, actuators and so on. The use of modern technologies in the farming sector will ensure high productivity, sustainable production and a more precise; resource-efficient approach to farming.

The Technologies that play a vital role in smart agriculture are mentioned below.

Data Analytics

Data analytics play a vital role in managing the process of farming with the help of its standalone analytics solutions and data pipelines to provide downstream solutions, etc.

Connectivity

Connectivity is another important aspect of smart agriculture. The whole process of smart agriculture is based on connectivity so that’s why it is very crucial. The types of connectivity you can use in the process of smart agriculture are cellular, LoRa, etc.

Sensors

When we talk about the smart way of farming, then this technology plays a crucial role. The sensors help the farmer to look after the management of soil, water, humidity, light, temperature, etc.

Software

Without the help of proper software, it is not possible to follow the process of smart agriculture. Specialized software solutions have been designed for specific farm types to operate and manage the smart agriculture processes.

Robotics

Robotics is an excellent step in the field of agriculture. According to certain research done on smart agriculture robotics, it is found that robotics helps in creating autonomous tractors, processing facilities, etc to simplify the process of farming and optimizing human efforts.

When farmers are armed with such technological tools that are mentioned above then they can easily enhance their production since these technologies will help them to monitor their field conditions even without visiting the field. It also helps in making strategic decisions for a single plant or for a whole-farm. Drones are also being used for this purpose.

What is the Smart Farming Cycle, Based on IoT?

The core meaning of IoT is to get data from things and send them to the internet. This process helps in optimizing farming efforts. The collection of data from the IoT devices that are installed on the farm should be done in a repetitive cycle which makes the farmers react according to the emerging situations quickly and effectively.

The Smart farming cycle associated with IoT consists of four-cycles which are mentioned below.

1. Observation

The cycle of observation is done effectively with the help of sensors. These sensors help in collecting observational data related to crops, soil, livestock, atmosphere, etc.

2. Diagnostics

The cycle of diagnosis is also done by sensors. Their values are provided to cloud-hosted IoT platforms that help in providing predefined decision rules and models which are also known by business logic. These sensors ascertain the condition of the object that is examined, to know the deficiencies or needs.

3. Decision

The observation and diagnostics cycle helps to analyse all the factors in detail, in order to take the right decisions. This helps in determining the necessary treatment required based on the final decisions.

4. Action

When all 3 cycles are done, then comes the necessary action to be taken. The whole cycle repeats from the beginning.

Major Areas of Agriculture Enhanced by IoT

According to research done on smart agriculture, it is found that IoT can add value to all areas of farming; like from growing crops to forestry. There are two major areas that IoT covers in the field of agriculture.

Those areas are given below

1. Farming automation or robotization

2. Precision farming

1. Farming automation

The traditional way of farming has always been difficult and often results in the loss of production, energy and also causes increased labour cost.

Smart farming helps the farmer to intelligently monitor and control the procedure of farming according to the climate and eliminates the need for any type of manual intervention. Various sensors deployed on the field, helps to measure the environmental parameters according to specific crop requirements. All those data are stored securely on the cloud-based platform for further processing with minimal manual intervention. The step of automation in the field of agriculture includes the use of agriculture drones.

These drones provide both ground and aerial-based crop health assessment, irrigation, crop monitoring, spraying, planting, field and soil analysis. The drone comes with advanced technology that can collect thermal and visual imagery while flying. These data are provided to farmers to have insight on plant health, counting, height measurement, field water pond mapping, chlorophyll measurement and so on. It also helps to provide a security system to the farm.

2. Precision Farming

It is an umbrella concept for IoT based approaches which makes farming more accurate and manageable for the farmer. In simple words, we can say that this makes it easy for farmers to provide proper treatment to their plants and animals. It offers superhuman accuracy to the farmer for doing successful farming.

One of the biggest differences between classical and precision farming approaches is that it provides decisions to be made per square meter or per animal for the field. By this advantage of accurate measurement, the farmer can boost their effectiveness in using pesticides and fertilizers on the field and select one of them according to the data in order to get a better result.

Conclusion

The innovation in farming technology has reduced the hard work in farming. The traditional farming methods are very hard and strict to follow and it requires a lot of human efforts to grow plants.

There are also so many weak points in traditional farming that have been solved like you can’t look after each plant's health and can’t also take effective measures according to the changing environment. Along with the basic garden tools, technology is also very essential.

But the introduction of this smart agriculture technology to the farmers, has optimized human efforts and has helped the farmers to improve their way of farming. Innovative technological advancements like precision farming, automation in the farming methods and IoT have revolutionized the farming sector.

We have discussed the benefits of smart agriculture technology in this article so you can enhance the quality and quantity of your harvest. Let technology help farmers to become smarter and more efficient; since they need to provide food for all the people on earth.