IoT in Sustenance Field Green Revolution
The world is constantly growing – one might say at an alarming rate. The need to grow more in less for billions of mouths around the world is becoming to be an increasing issue. Bad weather, scarce water supply, infertile soil, and lesser lands for performing agricultural/farming work are some factors affecting production, globally. The advent of newer technologies globally aids in each sector; farming/agriculture is receiving similar assistance.
IoT is a game-changer for almost every aspect of our living – food and sustenance are among the primary factors for inventing this technology; after communications/connectivity. Applications of IoT in the field of agriculture/farming are producing over-whelming results for all; a rise of 2 billion people is determined for feeding. With the enhancements of tools and techniques; the agriculture sector can be seen improving and improvising greatly. To boost the efficiency of production and reduce human interventions for errors whilst controlling costs and expenditures; the Internet of Things (IoT) is the solution for this problem.
The IoT-based agriculture/farming, or better yet the term “Smart Agriculture” is a term that is an amalgamation of agricultural techniques and production procedures; powered by IoT-based applications. Sensors in an IoT application helps farmers to understand the elements better – utilizing the same techniques for eons without understanding the basics of agriculture. The boom in Smart Agriculture can be seen as a recent achievement – a need to produce 70% more than the current production is a challenge farmers/agriculture industry is facing. IoT is the technology that will assist them to meet the huge rise in the production level. The knowledge about soil, when to water, trends of crops, fertilizers, and supplements to use are a few of the objectives which IoT meets heads – on.
We can see numerous agricultural industries have shifted their paradigms towards IoT – the reason? To get Smart Farming for the world, boost efficiency, productivity and present the global food economy with high productions. It is common knowledge that Agriculture is the backbone of several under-developing countries – the most common hindrance that commons with agriculture/farming are the traditional ways of farmers. Another barrier is the climatic changes. Global warming is an issue globally that results in sudden heavy rainfalls, droughts, intense storms, severe heatwaves, damaged soil, water pollution, etc. Keeping in mind these factors; the production drops to major notches. These are not all – climatic variations that result in environmental consequences such as seasonality into the plant life – cycle.
IoT has changed a lot and still is making huge changes in the Agricultural sectors – farmers are more aware of the crops’ trends, types of soils, nourishments, monitoring soil’s acidic levels, temperatures, wind, etc. Sensors embed into an IoT gadget helps farmers in providing knowledge of pest infestation, crop yielding, soil victuals, etc. whilst providing relevant data which is utilized to use and improve the crops. Real-time informatics is what IoT is famous for – accurate and precise figures to establish a smooth flow of agricultural logistics. Collecting environmental and machine metrics; crops and livestock both are equally improved. With the help of sensors, farmers are able to determine the state of crops, specify the usage of pesticides/fertilizers to reach an optimal level of production.
The market for IoT in agriculture is yet evolving and developing, but the present economic conditions changed the wind’s direction – but the question arises: why should companies invest in the IoT for the agriculture industry. Numerous reasons are there: complete control over production, minimal risks of crop devastation, water management, land and soil time precautions, increase in production, reduction in labor, crop monitoring, etc. Agriculture is a field that shall remain a hot topic in the IoT industry for years to come. What’s new is the integration of Drones in this field. Equipped with sensors and cameras are utilized for surveying the farms and fields – remotely controlled, these drones provide real-time data from there and let farmers decide and take appropriate actions to save crops, increase production, spray pesticide, etc.
Breaking the technologies and using them into this area; sensors, camera, images, mapping, data collection, data mining, real-time information, and other similar factors increase the usage of IoT. It might be better to call this utilization of IoT “green revolution”; the biggest benefit of it is that farmers are using the technology, and not being stuck to the traditional ways of farming/agriculture. Smart Agriculture is a tech-savvy, effective technology with promising results.
IoT has, indeed, brought a massive revolution in the Agriculture industry – solutions to various problems are being discovered: cost management, water shortage, soil fertilization, and productivity issues. IoT offers well-organized forecasting of circumscribed resources which ensures the best use of IoT enhances productivity. A trend is being followed in the IoT development field for Agriculture; implementing technologies and connecting appropriate devices to create a perfect combination for agricultural use. An IoT – enabled agriculture has aided the implementation of modern technological solutions to a proven knowledge. This has helped bridge-the-gap between production, quality, and quantity yield. Data ingested by attaining and obtaining information from multiple sensors for a real–time use or storing in a database ensures instant action and less damage to the crops. With a single, end-to-end intelligent operations and improved workflow execution, production gets processed quicker and reaches its destinations in the shortest period, imaginable.
