Recent research indicates that IoT has changed the majority of agriculture industries for a better future. With the extreme climatic changes and increase in population, there is a demand for more food to meet the requirements. The IoT-based smart farming enables the farmers to apply the smart technologies to the fields so as to reduce waste and improve the productivity. This smart farm revolution refers to the usage of latest technology inventions in agriculture to enhance the quality and quantity in crop harvesting as shown in Figure 8.3.
IoT-enabled sensors provide the real-time data to the farmers to take the right decision for better yield. For example, use of drones in spraying the pesticides reduces the labor cost and soil monitoring enhances the productivity. The government is encouraging the farmers to use the latest IT-based farming equipment by giving subsidies (Mooney, 2017). To preserve the technology revolution the skilled and semi-skilled manpower is trained through technical vocational education and training. This creates the employment opportunities for the people.
Smart farming can be achieved by introducing automation in irrigation, monitoring and controlling of crop growth, pest control and insect population control and adopting the latest IoT-based technologies.
Smart farming includes environmental data collection, monitoring and controlling. Traceability systems improve the customer’s faith in the agricultural products. Smart farming enables the embedded sensors to collect the environmental data. Hydroponic growing system is a system meant for feeding the plant without soil using mineral nutrient solutions. In this system, humidity, temperature of the water, electrical conductivity and potenz (“strength” in German) of hydrogen pH play the main role in growing plants.
It includes two subsystems: foggy spray system (for regulating the temperature and humidity) and auto-dosing system (enables to measure the water conditions using pH, electrical conductivity).
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