What is Smart farming? It is a capital intensive and high technology system to grow food in a clean and sustainable way for the masses. It is the application of modern ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in agriculture.
In Smart farming based on IoT, a system is built to monitor the cultivation field with the help of sensors (light, humidity, temperature, soil moisture, etc.) and the automation of the irrigation system. Farmers can monitor field conditions from anywhere.
The applications of intelligent agriculture or Smart farming based on IoT not only focus on large conventional farms, but could also be new levers to drive other common or growing trends in organic agriculture, family farming (small or complex spaces , livestock and / or particular cultures, preservation of particular varieties or high quality, among others) and improve highly transparent agriculture.
In terms of environmental issues, smart agriculture based on IoT can provide great benefits, including more efficient use of water, or optimization of inputs and treatments.
Some examples of IoT applied in Agriculture are ...
Agricultural drones
Technology has changed over time and agricultural drones are a very good example of this. Nowadays, agriculture is one of the main industries to incorporate drones. They are being used in agriculture in order to improve various agricultural practices. The ways in which terrestrial and aerial drones are used in agriculture are the evaluation of crop health, irrigation, crop control, crop fumigation, planting and soil and field analysis.
The main benefits of using drones include real-time crop health images, integrated GIS mapping, ease of use, time savings and the potential to increase yields.
From the data of drones, we can obtain information on indexes of vegetal health, count of plants and prediction of performance
The drone collects multispectral, thermal and visual images during the flight and then lands in the same place where it took off.
Cattle monitoring
Large farm owners can use wireless IoT applications to collect data on the location, welfare and health of their livestock. This information helps them identify animals that are sick so they can be separated from the herd, thus preventing the spread of the disease. It also reduces labor costs since farmers can locate their livestock with the help of IoT-based sensors.