“Smart farming” is a new idea that references the management of farms utilizing technology such as IoT, robots, drones, and AI to raise the number and quality of goods while optimizing the amount of human labor necessary for production.
Smart Farming is a strategic approach that focuses on providing the agricultural business with the framework to harness sophisticated technologies – such as big data, cloud computing, and the internet of things or IoT for tracking, monitoring, automating and analyzing processes. Smart Farming, often referred to as precision agriculture, is software-managed and sensor-controlled. Smart Farming is becoming increasingly important as a result of the expanding worldwide population, increasing demand for higher crop yields, the need to use natural resources efficiently, the increasing use and elegance of information and communication technology, as well as the increasing use of biotechnology.
IoT Based Solution Of Agricultural Problems
The data that can be extracted from objects and transmitted via the net is at the root of IoT. To maximize the agricultural process, IoT devices on a farm must gather and process information in a loop, allowing farmers to respond rapidly to developing challenges and changes in ambient circumstances.
Several people feel that IoT may prove valuable to all aspects of Farming, from grain production to reforestation. While there are numerous methods that IoT may enhance Farming, precision farming and agricultural automation are two of the most important ways IoT can transform agriculture.
Precise Farming
Precision farming, often known as precision agriculture, is an umbrella term encompassing Internet of Things-based technologies that make farming more regulated and precise.
In simple words, plants and cattle get precisely the treatment they need, determined by machines with superhuman accuracy. The biggest difference from the classical approach is that precision farming allows decisions to be made per square meter or even per plant/animal rather than for a field.
Farmers can increase the efficiency of fertilizers and pesticides or apply them strategically by carefully assessing differences within the same field.
Greenhouse Automation
Traditional greenhouses regulate environmental factors using human involvement or a proportional control system, which frequently results in output losses, energy losses, and higher labor costs.
Smart greenhouses powered by IoT can autonomously monitor and adjust the environment, reducing the need for physical intervention. Numerous sensors are used to detect environmental factors based on the crop’s unique needs. That information is then saved on a cloud-based portal for further processing and control with little human intervention.
Agriculture Drones
Agriculture is among the most important sectors to use ground-based and aerial drones for crop health evaluation, hydration, crop monitoring, crop spray, replanting, soils, field study, and other purposes. Drones collect hyperspectral, thermal, and visual imagery while flying. The information they collect allows farmers to gain insights into a wide range of metrics, including plant health indicators, plant counting and harvest prediction, plant height measurement, canopy mapping, soil moisture pond tracing, scouting updates, stash measuring, chlorophyll estimation, mineral contents in wheat, drains mapping, weed compression mapping, and so on.
Importantly, IoT-based smart Farming not only does aim at large-scale farming operations; it can also actually contribute to emerging agricultural trends such as organic agriculture household farming, which include breeding specific cattle and/or rising specific cultures, preserving specific or high-quality variants, and enhancing highly transparent Farming to consumers, society, and market awareness.
Smart Farming Cycles Based on IoT
The data that can be extracted from devices and transmitted via the internet is at the base of IoT. To enhance the agricultural process, IoT devices put on a farm must gather and process information in a loop, allowing farmers to respond rapidly to developing challenges and changes in external circumstances. Smart Farming follows a cycle that looks like this:
Observations
Sensors collect data from crops, cattle, land, or the environment.
Diagnosis
The sensor results are sent to a cloud-hosted IoT platform with established decision rules and frameworks, also known as “business logic,” which determine the status of the studied device and highlight any flaws or demands.
Decisions
Following the discovery of difficulties, the user and/or ML-driven parts of the IoT platform assess whether location-specific remediation is required and, if so, which.
Action
After end-user review and actions, the cycle starts again.
What Will the Future of Smart Farming Look Like?
Smart Farming and IoT-driven Farming are setting the framework for a “3rd green revolution” that corresponds to the use of communication and information technologies in harmony. Special equipment, IoT sensors, actuators, geo-positioning technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), as well as bots are examples of such items.
IoT technology aids in the better management of agricultural operations, minimizing production threats and improving the capacity to predict production outcomes, allowing farmers to plan ahead and distribute the output. Data on specific batches of crops and the number of crops to harvest, for instance, can assist farmers in reducing effort and waste.
In addition, to prepare for the 5G launch, service providers and mobile operators are updating their network architecture, pushing network services to the edge, and integrating long distances using the latest technology such as small cells and massive MIMO.
Internet of Food or Farm
Why not establish an Internet of Food Things (IoFT) since we already have the IoT or Internet of Things and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)? The European Commission’s Internet of Food and Farm 2020 (IoF2020) program, which is a component of Horizon 2020 Industrial Leadership, examines the possibility of IoT technology for the European food and farming industry via research and monthly meetings.
The Internet of Things or IoT has cultivated the faith that a smart system of sensors, actuators, cameras, robots, drones, and other network devices will deliver an unparalleled degree of control and automated decision-making to agriculture, enabling an everlasting ecosphere of innovation in this oldest of industries.
Third Green Revolution
Smart and IoT-powered agriculture are laying the path for a Third Green Revolution.
The Third Green Revolution is sweeping over Farming, following the plant hybridization and genetic revolutions. This transformation is based on the integration of data-driven analytics technologies such as precision agricultural equipment, IoT, big data statistics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs or drones), robotics, and so on.
Fertilizer and pesticide utilization will lessen in the future, according to this smart agricultural revolution, but total productivity will increase. IoT technology will improve food tracking, resulting in greater food hygiene. It will also benefit the world, for example, by making better usage of water or optimizing treatments and imports.
Conclusion
Smart Farming is changing the future of traditional Farming and making it more digital and efficient. As a result, smart Farming has the opportunity to generate a more efficient and durable kind of agricultural output that is centered on a more accurate and valuable resource strategy. New farms will bring humanity’s ultimate goal to fruition. It will support our booming population, which is expected to hit 6 trillion by 2050.
“Smart farming” is a new idea that references the management of farms utilizing technology such as IoT, robots, drones, and AI to raise the number and quality of goods while optimizing the amount of human labor necessary for production.
Smart Farming is a strategic approach that focuses on providing the agricultural business with the framework to harness sophisticated technologies – such as big data, cloud computing, and the internet of things or IoT for tracking, monitoring, automating and analyzing processes. Smart Farming, often referred to as precision agriculture, is software-managed and sensor-controlled. Smart Farming is becoming increasingly important as a result of the expanding worldwide population, increasing demand for higher crop yields, the need to use natural resources efficiently, the increasing use and elegance of information and communication technology, as well as the increasing use of biotechnology.
3STechLabs has expert IoT consultants who can provide you with all the information you need on Smart Farming and help you be a part of the 3rd Green Revolution.
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