Agriculture is one of the oldest and predominant fields in every country’s economic growth that acts as its backbone. The origin of the word agriculture is from the Latin word “ager”, which means land, and “culture”, which means cultivation. Like India in some other countries also the largest population income depends on farming practices. This sector is also considered as one of the biggest sources for employment and income generation. As per a survey report, in India nearly 64% of the total population is engaged in agriculture, mainly people from rural areas. Agriculture is the only source of food generation like fruits and vegetables. As compared with ancient times, now many tools and fast techniques are available in farming sector. Besides these latest techniques, the environmental factor plays an important role. In India, farmers are facing many problems concerned with agriculture like increasing demand of food products and weather-changing patterns that mostly affect the growth of crops these days. As per Unified National Fine (UNF) Food and Agriculture Organization, to fulfill the food requirements of increasing population about 70% more food has to be produced and that it was produced by 2006, so the old fashioned agriculture practices have moved towards smart farming with the help of agriculture companies and awareness of farmers.
Moreover, crop selection highly depends upon natural factors like temperature, moisture, sun light, humidity, etc. Also soil conditions are important like soil type, fertility and pH value. Adequate water is also required for irrigation purposes. In our country, water supply to crops depends upon monsoon which is not sufficient for irrigation purposes. How much watering is needed also varies from soil category and moisture content of that soil.
To fulfill all these challenges, companies are using concept of internet of things (IoT), which has paved the way towards smart and efficient farming methods. This IoT field of technology plays a quintessential role in boosting up crop yield rate, increasing global market connectivity by smart observing activities, enhancing weather monitoring to nurture different plants and making weather predictions, etc., with minimum human involvement within less time, thus making systems more cost efficient. By smart IoT devices, farmers can observe their fields and can get information easily from worldwide locations. In agriculture field IoT is gaining more attention due to the following key points:
- Global connectivity is possible by IoT operated devices
- Farming activities can be monitored with less human efforts
- Faster access
- Time efficiency
During the last few decades, the most critical issue in traditional farming methods has been climate change. It includes heat waves, rainfall patterns, storms, droughts, etc. All these factors play a predominant role in reduced productivity. These factors also affect the life cycle of plant growth. So, to counter these issues and challenges IoT is used extensively in agriculture field. The world food organizations are expecting agriculture market to reach 18.45 billion dollars in 2020. So, IoT devices are of great help in enhancing productivity in agriculture field as they are used to track soil quality, temperature of fields, humidity, safety from animals etc. It also helps in monitoring the live stocks and quality of crops. To accomplish these activities numerous sensors are used to provide real-time data to farmers related to rainfall, soil nutrition and pest infections.
Main benefits of IoT in farming are as follows:
- Efficient water management without any wastage using sensors
- Monitoring of soil conditions before growing plants
- Reduces manpower and cuts down the labor cost
- Real-time monitoring for proper growth of crops
- Identification of soil moisture and pH level
- Identification of plant diseases using sensors and Radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips. This information can be shared with scientists and action can be taken to protect the crops.
- Sale of crop will be boosted up without any geographical restrictions
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