Real Time Applications Of IoT In Agriculture: Discussion

Kiran Venneti
Dept of ECE, ACOE, Andhrapradesh, India

Corresponding author: venneti.kiran48@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The virtual breach between agricultural producers and IoT technologies has reduced in the last years. In the future,
those technology will permit enhancing productiveness via the sustainable cultivation of food, as well as to attend to
the environment thanks to the efficient use of water and the optimization of inputs and treatments. IoT technology
permits growing structures that help exceptional agricultural processes. Some of these systems are remote
monitoring systems, decision support tools, automated irrigation systems, frost protection systems, and fertilization
systems, among others. Considering the aforementioned facts, it is necessary to provide farmers and researchers
with a clear perspective of IoT applications in agriculture. In this sense, this work presents a systematic literature
review of IoT-based tools and applications for agriculture. The goal of this paper is to provide a toplevel view of the
IoT packages in agriculture through topics such IoT-based software applications for agriculture available in the
market, IoT-based devices used in the agriculture, as well as the benefits provided by this kind of technologies.
INTRODUCTION
To improve the agricultural yield with fewer resources and labor efforts, substantial innovations have been made
throughout human history. Nevertheless, the high population rate never let the demand and supply match during all
these times. According to the forecasted figures, in 2050, the world population is expected to touch 9.8 billion, an
increase of approximately 25% from the current figure [1]. Almost the entire mentioned rise of population is
forecasted to occur among the developing countries [2]. On the other side, the trend of urbanization is forecasted to
continue at an accelerated pace, with about 70% of the world‘s population predicted to be urban until 2050
(currently 49%) [3]. Furthermore, income levels will be multiples of what they are now, which will drive the food
demand further, especially in developing countries. As a result, these nations will be more careful about their diet
and food quality; hence, consumer preferences can move from wheat and grains to legumes and, later, to meat. In
order to feed this larger, more urban, and richer population, food production should double by 2050 [4, 5].
Particularly, the current figure of 2.1 billion tons of annual cereal production should touch approximately 3 billion
tons, and the annual meat production should increase by more than 200 million tons to fulfill the demand of 470
million tons [6, 7]. Not only for food, but crop production is becoming equally critical for industry; indeed crops like
cotton, rubber, and gum are playing important roles in the economies of many nations. Furthermore, the food-crops-
based bioenergy market started to increase recently. Even before a decade, only the production of ethanol utilized
110 million tons ofcoarse grains (approximately 10% of the world production) [7, 8]. Due to the rising utilization of
food crops for bio-fuel production, bio-energy, and other industrial usages, food security is at stake. These demands
are resulting in a further increase of the pressure on already scarce agricultural resources.
Main constraints in Agriculture industry

DISCUSSION
After the Industrial Revolution, mainly since the advent of mechanization, and along the Green Revolution, humans
and machines have been efficiently collaborating for growing crops to feed people. However, to face the population
growth in the coming years, an extra effort is needed to succeed, not only in feeding people by increasing
productivity, but also in doing it in the most efficient and respectful possible way, that is, producing sustainably. To
face this challenge, remarkable advances in technology have been appearing over the last decades, in particular the
access to reliable agricultural data and advanced computer techniques to get the optimal meaning from them,
eventually obtaining maximum benefits while being respectful with the environment. This new approach driven by
digital technology implies that growers must act as supervisors of their crops rather than laborers, in an attempt of
avoiding repetitive, physically-demanding, and tedious field tasks. In this modern agronomical framework, DATA is
the key, and the information-based management cycle described above provides the practical approach that unites
concept and tasks. The following points summarize some of the specific ideas drawn from this study:
• Precision Agriculture, which consists of applying what is needed when and where is needed, has further improved
the efficiency of managing farms with the addition of data-based digital systems that increase the knowledge of
producers about their fields; this is known as Agriculture 4.0 or Digital Farming. When these data-driven farms
incorporate robotics with AI algorithms to their systems, the overall concept is then referred to as Agriculture 5.0.
Some studies report that agricultural robots integrating forms of AI can do certain tasks faster than humans [23].
Despite there are other studies that contradict this statement [63], robotics is a growing economy and there exists a
great potential for many applications within agriculture.
• A greater adoption of Digital Farming by professional growers is vital to not only improving a farm’s financial
performance, but also to meet the food needs of an expanding population [6]. Small farms will steadily incorporate
basic technology whereas large fields will likely invest with sophisticated equipment, but data-less intuition-driven
management will no longer represent the modus operandi of professional farms in the future. This should be
considered a source of opportunities, especially for a new generation of young farmers used to digital technology,
who are the ones with the capacity to balance an aging population in rural areas, mainly those in industrialized
countries.
• After the rapid growth of UAVs, a steady-state is being reached, mostly induced by the fact that data analysis and
ground-truth validation has resulted far more complex and delicate than image acquisition and platform handling.
This has promoted the expansion of proximal sensing and the exploration of combining both data sources—aerial
and terrestrial—for a better understanding of the physiology of plants and trees.
• Maps, as the most common way to represent agricultural data, would need to be standardized. Intensely-
interpolated colored maps are output by GIS, FMIS, and other software applications, but at the time of comparing
data with the precision enough to grant statistical significance, it often becomes an impossible mission without
standardization. Figure 3, for example, uses the flat representation provided by the local tangent plane (LTP) and
formatted in a regular grid. Other programs use UTM projections, and there are even images only given in geodetic
coordinates. At the need of overlapping maps, it takes a big effort to make all data compatible. Not only the way
coordinates are represented needs a standard, but also the units, intervals, and even colors in which parameters are
displayed. The combination of aerial and ground data, for instance, will greatly benefit from such standardization in
the way data is visually displayed for the average grower to understand.
• Table 2 provides a representative compilation of software applications for farm management. The list is not
exhaustive, and yet includes companies from four continents and 14 countries, which provides evidence of the fact
that agricultural digitalization is in fact a global move.
• Regarding variable rate applications, adoption rates need to augment, and to do so, farmers must find by
themselves the value in this technology for their crops. Only after maintaining accurate spatial records and analyzing
field data can effective variable rate prescriptions be created [39] to address particular tasks.
Livestock monitoring

IoT applications help farmers to collect data regarding the location, well-being, and health of their cattle. This
information helps them in identifying the condition of their livestock. Such as, finding animals that are sick so, that
they can separate from the herd, preventing the spread of the disease to the entire cattle. The feasibility of ranchers
to locate their cattle with the help of IoT based sensors helps in bringing down labor costs by a substantial amount.

A company called cowlar leveraged IoT for managing dairy farm operations. They launched smart  neck collars for
cows. A non-invasive monitoring system runs advanced proprietary algorithms combining dairy science, expert
knowledge and machine learning to deliver actionable information such as temperature, activity, rumination &
behaviour for any health alerts, disease symptoms, estrus detection & feed optimization.
Monitoring climate conditions

 Weather stations equipped with smart sensors can collect weather data and send useful information to a farmer.
Moreover, the information is analyzed by special software and the farmer gets ready-made analysis that helps him
have a detailed forecast and avoid crop losses.

As an example, allMETEO is an IoT-based agricultural project that offers farmers special software and equipment
for monitoring weather conditions which alarms the early warning of extreme temperatures, frost and rainy weather
on your farm fields.
Greenhouse Automation

 In addition to sourcing environmental data, weather stations can automatically adjust the conditions to match the
given parameters and to provide the most appropriate condition for each greenhouse.

GreenIQ is also an interesting product that uses smart agriculture sensors. It is a smart sprinkler controller that
allows you to manage your irrigation and lighting systems remotely.
Crop monitoring

As in the case of weather condition monitoring, sensors for crop monitoring also collect all information like crop
health, humidity, precipitation, temperature, and other parameters. If there are any deviations, farmers may identify
them beforehand and take appropriate actions. Also, sensors help farmers determine when the best moment to plant
crops and harvest them.

Semios, one of the most popular IoT projects for monitoring crops, provides farmers with remote control of climate,
insect and disease monitoring.
Drones

In precision agriculture, drones have a range of uses from soil and crop field analysis to planting and pesticide
spraying. Drones can be used with different imaging technologies like hyperspectral, multispectral, thermal, etc. that
can provide the farmers with time and site-specific information regarding crop health, fungal infections, growth
bottlenecks, etc.

Drones can also identify drier regions in a field and measures can then be taken to irrigate such regions with better
techniques. Precision agriculture provides farmers with such concrete information that enables them to make
informed decisions and utilize their resources more efficiently.
The eBee SQ agriculture drone can cover hundreds of acres in a single flight for extremely efficient crop monitoring
and analysis.
CONCLUSION
The focus on smarter, better, and more efficient crop growing methodologies is required in order to meet the
growing food demand of the increasing world population in the face of the ever-shrinking arable land. The
development of new methods of improving crop yield and handling, one can readily see currently: technology-
weaned, innovative younger people adopting farming as a profession, agriculture as a means for independence from
fossil fuels, tracking the crop growth, safety and nutrition labeling, partnerships between growers, suppliers, and
retailers and buyers. This paper considered all these aspects and highlighted the role of various technologies,
especially IoT, in order to make the agriculture smarter and more efficient to meet future expectations. For this
purpose, wireless sensors, UAVs, Cloud-computing, communication technologies are discussed thoroughly.
Furthermore, a deeper insight on recent research efforts is provided. In addition, various IoT-based architectures and
platforms are provided with respect to agriculture applications. A summary of current challenges facing the industry
and future expectations are listed to provide guidance to researchers and engineers. Based on all this, it can be
concluded that every inch of farmland is vital to maximize crop production. However, to deal with every inch
accordingly, the use of sustainable IoT-based sensors and communication technologies is not optional—it is
necessary.
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