IoT in Agriculture: Applications of Internet of Things for Agriculture

The IoT wave continues to transform everything in its path, whether it is cars, toys, or appliances.

IoT has a great impact on sectors like agriculture. According to a new survey of more than 1,600 farmers by research firm Alpha Brown, 250,000 farmers in the United States use IoT. 

Moreover, more than half of them consider investing in solutions IoT specific to their sector. On the French side, according to a study carried out in September 2016, at the time, farmers were already widely equipped with eFarming solutions with four items of equipment or tools used on average, and 2/3 of those questioned expected to provide themselves with new digital equipment in the coming years.

Those who have taken the plunge are improving the monitoring of their livestock and cereal crops a little more every day. 

The study also notes the usefulness of the IoT for smaller tasks, such as those performed in dairy, vegetable, and fruit crops and greenhouse crops. Given their tremendous impact, the popularity of IoT technologies among farmers is not that surprising.

Let's take a closer look at four agricultural sectors that have chosen to deploy IoT solutions.

Livestock

The use of collar trackers now allows ranchers to monitor their livestock's health, feed, safety, and other watchpoints more accurately. They can geolocate their livestock in real-time. A data storage system then records the information in a database to establish a reference model for the herd's movements over a given period. 

Applying intelligent algorithms to these models helps determine if livestock is moving irregularly or if some animals are becoming isolated from the pack, as in the case of injured animals.

The implementation of this solution is relatively easy. Small connected tracers are used over an IoT network such as Wi-SUN or any other vast area network (WAN). For example, we could have relay antennas distributed in the fields to cover a vast area. 

The farmer or breeder would easily access this information through a web portal or an app on their smartphone.

Precision agriculture

Another segment of connected agriculture, precision agriculture, is experiencing tremendous growth. It delivers and will continue to provide more control and precision for farmers. Precision farming was born out of GPS guidance for tractors and is practiced globally today. It is revolutionizing an entire sector of activity, the judge instead:

• Battery-powered soil sensors collect data on soil nitrogen content and report this information regularly.

• Irrigation sensors are used for the measurement of the water level and automatically notify the irrigation and sprinkler system.

• Flood sensors are used for monitoring water levels and can be set to automatically shut off valves responsible for overwatering plants and simultaneously send an alert to a specified email address.

• Farmers can collect data about fertilizers and pesticides required for their crops.

• Finally, a frost sensor can automatically detect and alert users when weather conditions suggest a frost that could damage sensitive plants.

Drones

Another segment of connected agriculture that is on the rise: drones. The spread of diseases in crops is a real cause for concern, demonstrating the direct impact on yields and, as a result, the need to have enough food crops to cope with population growth. 

While it is better to prevent the onset of these diseases, it is more realistic and simpler to identify, isolate and remove affected crops immediately.

One way to do this is through surveillance drones. Drones conduct automatic patrols on a regular basis for the retrieval of image data on a particular crop from their on-farm base.

Making use of image recognition algorithms, farmers can identify affected agricultural plots. The "tagged" images are correlated with the drones' GPS to provide exact information. 

This information is assimilated from several drone recordings before being analyzed and then transmitted to the farmer, who can take the necessary corrective measures. 

Interestingly, the entire process, from the launch of drones, their piloting, data capture, and analysis, to reporting, is fully automated.

Smart greenhouses

The role of greenhouse agriculture is to improve the yield of fruits, vegetables, crops, etc. But greenhouses are known to be energy-intensive. 

Operators are therefore quite logically looking for solutions to reduce their electricity bills. Building smart greenhouses would save them money and meet their farming goals.

An intelligent greenhouse with IoT technology can thus control the environment; servers in the Cloud can remotely access the greenhouse computer system when connected. Processing the data and eliminating permanent manual monitoring then saves costs.

According to some projections, more and more farmers are expected to use IoT in the coming years. Efficiency gains, higher yields, reduced manual tasks, and more.

Technologies and the IoT have the potential to transform agriculture in many ways. Here are five ways IoT agriculture can improve your business:

• Data collection: Smart agricultural sensors can collect data on weather conditions, soil quality, the progress of crop growth, or the health of livestock. This data is used to track the state of your general operation and personnel performance, equipment efficiency, etc.

• Better yield management: The ability to forecast your production yield allows you to plan for better product distribution. If you know precisely how much harvest you can get, you can be sure you have no unsold inventory.

• Better cost management: By spot anomalies in crop growth or livestock health, you will be able to anticipate the risk of yield loss.

• Increase efficiency: Using smart devices, you can automate multiple processes throughout your production cycle, for example, irrigation, fertilization, or pest control.

• Improved product quality and volumes: Process automation gives you better control of the production process and maintains crop quality and growth capacity.

These benefits of using IoT in your operation can potentially lead to higher revenues.