Technological Development follows no physical or invisible boundaries and expands its roots in all directions. Working on same criteria Internet of Things has its applications in field of Industry (as Industrial Internet of Things), Home security and smart cities and so on. Even the agricultural sector isn’t left untouched from the technological development of Internet of Things leading to development of Agriculture Internet of Things.
Agriculture Internet of Things helps in increasing crop productivity by way of managing and controlling the activities like –
Crop water management – Adequate water supply is an essence for agriculture and the crops can be damaged in either of situation of excess of water supply or in shortage of water supply. Agriculture Internet of Things with integration of Web Map Service (WMS) and Sensor Observation Service (SOS) provides a solution to manage water requirement or water supply for crop irrigation. Agriculture Internet of Things smartly analyses the water requirement of crop and utilizes the scarce water resource available to reduce wastage of water.
In areas of drought Crop water management function of Agriculture IoT can prove to be of great value as it manages the limited water supply smartly with least wastage of water resource by calculating the valve operation timing and building optimum irrigation strategy.
Precision Agriculture – The level of accuracy of weather forecasts affects the crop productivity to a great extent. Higher the level of accuracy of weather forecast, the lower would be the chances of crops being damaged thus there would be higher level of productivity.
Agriculture Internet of Things ensures accurate and timely communication of real time data or information related to dynamic agricultural processes like plantation, harvesting etc. and weather forecasts, soil quality, availability and cost of labor required to the farmers before-hand. Farmer’s with availability of such important real time information in advance are able to plan their course of activities pre-hand and take corrective/preventive measures for future contingency.
Integrated Pest Management or Control (IPM/C) – Often the farmer’s hard work are destroyed by pests and they suffer huge monetary losses. To prevent such situation Agriculture Internet of Things has a system that monitor and scans the environmental parameters & plant growth, further this data is utilized by pest control sensors which is capable of predicting pest behavior. This information can be used by farmers to reduce damage done by pests on a large scale.
Thus Pest Management & Control works on the fundamental basis which are as follows –
- Observation
- Inspection
- Identification
- Record Tracking
Food Production and Safety – Agriculture Internet of Things aims not only at attaining optimum food productivity along with quality matching the standards but also aims at Food security at different levels like storage, transportation etc.,. To ensure food safety Agriculture Internet of Things has a system that monitors the various factors like shipping time, storage temperature and cloud based record keeping etc.
Agriculture IoT is also laced with monitoring tool i.e. an ear tag for cattle’s that is capable of detecting respiratory diseases in them and in case of any alarming situation of disease detected it alerts the concerned authority so that the animal can be separated from the herd, preventing the disease from spreading.
Agriculture Internet of Things (IoT) Applications
In our previous post we have already discussed about Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) innovation and its application, today we are going to discuss about application of Agriculture Internet of Things.
- The Phenonet Project by Open IoT – The Phenonet enables the plant breeders to evaluate the performance of differentiated varieties of wheat with help of measurements taken from remote sensors. These Sensors are capable of monitoring various factors like soil temperature, humidity, air temperature and so on.
- It helps to improve the quality and helps the plant breeders to monitor growth of plants under various climate conditions.
- Phenonet Project is a step ahead towards Agriculture Internet of Things, it measures on field environmental & plant physiology parameters resulting in improvement of quality.
- CLAAS Equipment – CLASS is a leading manufacturer of agricultural machinery founded in 1913. CLASS offers tools and equipment’s to support Agriculture Internet of Things, The CLASS Agriculture Internet of Things equipment’s can be operated on autopilot and farmers can receive advice on ways to improve crop productivity and reduce grain losses.
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- CLASS has entered in a partnership venture with 365FarmNet, to facilitate the service to farmers using which farmers can manage and control their agricultural plotting’s via a computer or smartphone.
- It collects important piece of information for further analysis and utilization of such information in field mapping, various planning program like fertilization planning and nutrient.
- Precisionhawk’s UAV Sensor platform – Unmanned Aerial Vehicle’s (UAV) Sensors are efficient in collecting superior quality data and sensing and analysis of data collected for facilitating farmers with relevant piece of information like wind speed, air pressure etc. using artificial intelligence. This platform can be used in easing civil service like surveying, mapping & imaging of agricultural plots.
- Precisionhawk UAV uses a drone to carry out its operation data collection and monitoring. It’s the farmer that guides the drone regarding the fields to be surveyed & from what altitude.
- Cleangrow’s Carbon Nanotube Probe – CleanGrow Ltd., founded in the year 2009 Facilitates the service of making the quick measurement of concentration of ions in a given liquid. In other words the firm measures the various nutrient levels present in a given liquid on field.
- Cleangrow Ltd. Uses the Carbon Nanotube Probe as a transducing layer in the sensors, enabling the measurement or test for multiple ions in a solo device. This has also lead the meter to provide instant feedback to the user.
- Temputech’s Wireless Sensor Monitoring – Temputech have come up with a Hazard & Grain Management cloud based apps which are powered by GE equipment Insight platform. This wireless sensor monitor device acts as a safety measure against hazards like fire, overloading etc. in Grain elevators by way of slowing down or stopping the operation of conveyor belts in situation of overloading or overheating to avoid any possible damage.
- In addition, farmers can set alarms for various factors or situations related to temperature, humidity & vibration and so on that can be monitored by the sensor.
Agriculture IoT Future (2050) And Market Size
It is forecasted that the Agriculture Internet of Things in 2050 will increase the food production by 70% and would be feeding to 9.6 billion of people globally by the year 2050.
Therese Cory, Beecham Research analyst, & Towards Smart Farming, author of a new report, stated: “The demand for more food has to be set against the challenges of rising climate change and more extreme weather conditions, along with the environmental impact resulting from intensive farming practices.”
Agriculture IoT: 2050 | Global Shift Timeline
Considering the growth of Internet of Things Since the year 2000, we will find the following shift in use of sensors over the period –
- Year 2000 – Globally there were 525 Million farms on record out of which not a single farm was connected to Internet of Things
- Year 2025 – With same base of 525 Million farms there were 600 Million in use at these farms. This is a major shift of technological advancement in Agriculture Internet of Things: 2050
- Year 2035 – With 525 Millions of farm globally there was a growth of more than three fold in sensors implanted at these farms as compared to the year 2020. There were 2 Billion sensors used in 525 Million farms globally in the year 2050.
As per a report Agriculture Internet of Things has a potential to conserve 50 Billion gallons of fresh water in a year.
Agriculture Internet of Things: 2050 | Venture Investment
In past year 2014, till third quarter of last year there was total venture capital investment of US 269 Million in 41 different deals in agriculture & food startups. One of top IT Giant, Google has a venture investment of USD 15 Billion in Farmers Business Network.
Other prominent deals in Agriculture Internet of Things are –
- Conservis raised USD 10 Million to facilitate farmers real time track of their agricultural holding
- FarmLogs raised USD 4 Million to develop & offer apps to farmers that would help them to boost their productivity and profitability by analyzing and filtering the crops which are expected to have higher demand.
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