IoT technology is growing at a very fast rate and is being used in farming nowadays. The very first conference papers on IoT-based application were published in 2010 (Duan, 2011). Since then, numerous works have been done in IoT field. It is helping in increasing resources. There have been many contributions in this area by some Asian researchers. Agriculture is one of the main research areas which has integrated this technology. Many researches and studies have been done on integrating information technology with agriculture science, water regulation, effect of production on environment, new strategies of production, improvement in soil composition for making it more suitable for arable farming, crop cultivation factors, food supplies preservation and conservation, horticulture with outdoor fruits and vegetables cultivation. With the enhancement of wireless technologies, monitoring and controlling has become easy with new precision agriculture. IoT solutions are surfacing to support the farmers by providing easy solutions to farming challenges.
For the farming solutions, monitoring devices and wireless sensors can be combined under one umbrella that includes predictive analytics on crop production and its growth. Agricultural machinery combined with processing and management of data is showing better outputs in various areas like precision agriculture, livestock farming, arable farming etc. IoT-based technologies are providing great solutions to data-centric agricultural industries. Despite the amazing solutions provided by IoT, many challenges arise when agriculture is combined with these technologies. The further literature survey provides the information of work being done in this field and dwells on the challenges being faced. With the increase in population, the demand for food has been growing tremendously which has led to the demand–supply gap. To fill this demand–supply gap, the production of food needs to increase almost twice the present status (Tripathi et al., 2019). Crop production is also another dominating factor that appends the production of food to the nation’s economy. Bioenergy that utilizes fuels from various renewable sources of energy is growing worldwide. Another challenge is that with the increase in population, the use of fossil fuels has increased that has caused a great threat to food security. The smart agriculture industry ensures sustainable use of natural resources and renewable sources of energy due to which it is expected to rise to the market of about 15$ billion in next 5 years. IoT has provided solutions like farming vehicles for reducing the waste and enhancing the production of food. Energy crops are being produced for bioenergy generation.
According to the recent Food and Agriculture Organization reports, it has been predicted that the world may need about 70% more food by 2050 for which there is an urgent need for more farm produce. The solutions provided by IoT are capable enough of filling the demand–supply gap.
With the new technologies, it has become easier to record and measure the environmental changes and find suitable solutions to them. These newly derived wireless networks, devices and sensors consume a lot of energy because of the batteries that are boarded with actuators (Cambra et al., 2017). Autonomous robots are sensor-based and capable of navigation as well as seed sowing along with vision systems, Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) wireless sensors, GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), Bluetooth and GPS (Global Positioning System) technology. The data captured from these devices are further transferred for further research. There are many factors that limit the agricultural development such as natural resources availability, agricultural land suitability, increase in population, depletion of biofuels etc. Land employment has significantly declined in the past 10 years. In 1991, land for production of food was approximately 39% of the world’s landmass, but later according to the 2013 statistics it reduced to 37% and has been declining continuously with time.
Sensors have been integrated with appliances and water harvesting systems and are helping to track horticulture patterns and livestock breeding. Internet connectivity has made it easier to monitor and control agricultural science growth. Sensing capabilities have facilitated simpler ways to identify the patterns, to predict patterns and hence help in maintaining ecological balance with smart strategies. The IoT works on three layers, first is mainly sensing, second is delivery and third is control (TongKe, 2010). The first layer helps in collecting data from sensors like GPS, RFID etc. Its main job is to collect the data and sense the physical entities and environmental factors. The next layer is an application layer that refers to application delivery in different deployment forms like smart agriculture. The data regarding environmental conditions can be collected and deployed with the application and integrated with the sensors for determining various patterns with different segments such as domestication, horticulture, crop cultivation, irrigation and production of food (Hong, 2011).
With the help of IoT, farmers are now able to navigate, monitor and operate or control mechanisms. In order to improve data management, wireless sensors and aerial drones can gather the data. Existing challenges have been curbed by a solution framework provided by the smart agriculture market. It can further be employed for management of livestock regarding cattle rearing, tracking farm produce, monitoring cattle health and also horticulture development, controlling the production of food and managing crop yield. Augment bioenergy can help to trace food safety. Bluetooth and wireless sensors also help to collect data (Zeinab and Elmustafa, 2017). IoT minimizes human intervention and helps to manage, monitor and control the data. With the help of this technology, the farmers have understood the importance of arable farming and precision agriculture. Smart agriculture and bioenergy have great potential to fill the demand–supply gap that farmers have been facing. Further on the basis of smart agriculture, cost-effective solutions can be suggested. IoT facilitates dynamic tracking and transparency to monitor data to provide significant information in this research area.
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