Food is a basic necessity of human survival. From animals to humans, everyone is bound to a chain of food supply. It doesn’t matter how advanced we have technologies today and how far we have come in terms of technologies; the fact is that we still and will rely forever on our farmers to bring food for us. However, we can still use those technologies to help the farmer in sowing and reaping with advanced equipment.
We have plenty of examples that show how advanced technology is helping several sectors in their work. And they all show remarkable results. Advanced technology like the Internet of things, AI or Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, and Machine Learning are all leveraging humans in their tasks with less effort. The Internet of things ensures us electronic devices, smart homes, and devices in one place to control them all together without any effort of going here and there.
Some impressive examples of usage of IoT include the music industry, Hospitality, disaster management, E-commerce, manufacturing industry, travel industry, and construction industry. This article gives you a detailed insight into how IoT helps agriculture to feed humans by describing the usages of IoT farming.
What Does the Internet of Things Mean In Agriculture?
With every passing day, the advancement of connecting things to the Internet becomes easier, whether it is a car, a home appliance, or an office machine.
With internet connectivity, they enable sharing, receiving, and analyzing data. They can also make decisions, grant guidance, and give results. This is the IoT.
However, as fast as we see everything changing around us in our routine, it is difficult to see the same advancement reaching the agricultural state. Fortunately, agronomists and farmers of the new era have finally been ready for agitech. They are bringing the idea of using tech in agriculture into reality.
What Is Smart Irrigation System Using IoT?
Smart farming is a type of agriculture that works on technologies of IoT. It defines a system with a technology of state-of-the-art that allows the cultivation of the land in a very sustainable way.
Due to the usage of IoT technology in the field, the workload and management have become easier. For instance, with the use of sensors, one can easily detect the temperature, humidity, and quality of the soil. It also helps in automating the process of irrigation based on the soil condition.
This helps the farmer in monitoring the conditions of crops remotely and gives them a chance to manage the resources carefully. That is why smart agriculture is ideal and much more effective than ways of traditional agriculture.
5 Advantages of Smart Irrigation Systems Using IoT
The Internet of Things is much more beneficial for farmers than we think. Even though there is not much advancement in the field, the advancement made is still quite impressive and beneficial. Some key benefits of using IoT technologies in agriculture are described below.
1. Intelligence Data Collection
IoT devices enable sensors that help in collecting a bunch of useful data for farmers. It helps in collecting information regarding the quality of soil, predicting weather conditions, and helping in the progress of the plantation. This not only helps in analyzing the condition of the farm but also in checking on the workers’ performances.
2. Waste Reduction
IoT technology in agriculture also helps in managing cost-efficient production. For instance, smart devices help the farmer identify the irregularity in the crop more accurately and precisely. Ultimately, it will be easy for them to take action beforehand and protect the yield from any damage.
Moreover, it also helps in saving costs in terms of fertilization and irrigation, as the sensors in the field help in identifying the condition of the soil.
Furthermore, these sensors also predict the best time for harvesting, which reduces the waste of crops.
3. Process Automation
Smart devices in agriculture also help in the automation of the various stages of production, which include fertilizers, irrigation, and pest control.
Moreover, these automation devices give you more precise results than manual interventions. This leads to saving resources and high-quality products. This automatically ensures the quality of the harvest.
4. Animal Monitoring
Other than crops and yields, IoT in the farms also helps in analyzing the health of animals on the farm, even from far away. It reduces the time of finding and catching a specific animal from the herd and checks its physical condition.
Moreover, it also notifies the pregnancy details about the farm animal. And if an animal is sick, the application notifies the farmer immediately of the current situation.
5. Competitive Advantage
It also increases the rate, amount, and quality of harvesting, which gives competitive benefits to the business. Sensors installed on a harvesting machine or tractors immediately notify the owner if there is anything going wrong with its working.
5 IoT Applications of Smart Irrigation Systems Using IoT
With numerous benefits of IoT in Agriculture, it can be installed and used in various sectors of agriculture with quite successful results in the end. Some of those applications are described below.
1. IoT Agriculture Sensor:
Sensors installed in agriculture bring quite impressive results. It helps the farmer to analyze the condition of soil, water, crop, and weather. Its aim is to control production efficiently without wasting natural resources.
2. Demand For Irrigation:
Water is no doubt an inseparable aspect of agricultural fields. But if an excessive amount is given to the field, it might ruin the plantation process. That is why it is essential to know where water needs more and where it does not. In such a situation, IoT devices come handy, which analyze the water in the soil and trigger the irrigation system automatically where necessary.
3. Soil Correction:
The IoT devices used for controlling irrigation processes are also used for analyzing the condition of the soil, including quality, soil nutrients, and PH levels. This helps the farmers to identify which part of the soil needs correction, like cathe or fertilizer.
4. Crop Diagnosis:
Using drones in crops provides various solutions and benefits since drones have Internet, sensors, and GPS, which helps them to analyze the conditions more precisely and helps you make decisions at a better level.
This ensures the diagnosis of the crop health without causing any laboring efforts as farmers don’t require to travel miles away for checking. Thus drones aid in saving resources and time.
5. Smart Greenhouse:
The state of humidity, temperature, and luminosity can easily be controlled and managed in greenhouses. Generally, this management can be handled manually through sparse, covers, and other means.
However, IoT devices help you in connecting or unify all the greenhouses in one system. Thus making the situation more controllable and less complicated.
Conclusion
IoT technologies in agriculture are only beneficial. It allows the framing process to be fast, accurate, precise, and quality, enabling less effort, resources, and expenses. This makes it ideal and requires one to get advanced in this field.
