Smart Farming: How the Internet of Things transform the Agriculture Industry.

26

September

2020

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With the rising population growth, which is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, there is increasingly more pressure on the agriculture industry in order to meet this rising demand (UN, 2019). In addition, environmental challenges, such as unfavorable weather conditions and climate change, only complicate this further. To meet this demand, the agriculture industry is moving towards the use of the Internet of Things (IoT). Agriculture applications of IoT allow the industry to increase operational efficiency, decrease costs, reduce waste as well as improve the quality of their yield (Ravindra, 2020).

With smart farming, real-time data of farming procedures is gathered, processed, and analyzed, to allow large farm owners to be able to make more informed decisions (Kamilaris et al., 2016). With the use of IoT, players in the agriculture industry can monitor their equipment, crops, and livestock. Moreover, the data obtained from sensors placed in the field, allows them to run statistical predictions for their crops and livestock (Meola, 2020). A few IoT-enabled applications in smart farming, such as Precision Farming, Livestock Farming, and Smart Greenhouses will be discussed below.

Precision Farming

Precision farming is an umbrella notion for IoT-based techniques to make farming more controlled and accurate. Such IoT-based techniques make use of items, such as sensors, control systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, automated hardware, and so on (Sciforce, 2019). Large farm owners can use crop management devices which should be placed in the field to collect data specific for crops. These devices gather information ranging from temperatures to leaf water potential, to overall crop health. By having this visibility at the crop-level, large farm owners are able to effectively prevent any diseases that can harm their yield. Thus, precision farming allows large farm owners to make decisions per square meter or per plant, as opposed to traditional farming where decisions are made at field-level (Sciforce, 2019). Furthermore, with precision farming, large farm owners reduce their environmental footprint as it allows for more efficient irrigation and more precise use of fertilizers and pesticides for crops (Kamilaris et al., 2016).

Livestock Farming

With the use of wireless IoT applications, large farm owners can collect data and monitor the location, well-being, and health of their livestock. With the information collected from the sensors attached to the animals, large farm owners can identify sick cattle. These sick cattle can be separated from the herd, thereby preventing the spread of the disease (Sciforce, 2019). This would save farm owners significant medical costs which they would have occurred had the disease spread to the rest of the herd. Additionally, it reduces labor costs as ranchers can locate their cattle more easily with the help of IoT-based sensors (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart Greenhouses   

Greenhouse farming is a practice of growing crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. in a controlled environment to provide favorable growing conditions and protect the crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. from unfavorable weather and various pests (Hajdu, 2020). Smart greenhouses are designed with the use of IoT so that it intelligently monitors and controls the climate, based on the requirements of the growing crops. Specifically, the IoT sensors in the greenhouse provide information on the light levels, air pressure, humidity, and temperature. These sensors can control the machines to open a window, turn on lights, control a heater, and so on. In addition, with the creation of a cloud server, farm owners can remotely access the system and control the temperatures within the greenhouse. This eliminates the costs of constant manual monitoring as well as optimizing the growth conditions of the crops (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart farming and IoT-driven agriculture have laid the foundations for the Green revolution. The Green revolution is expected to transform the agriculture industry by relying on combinations of new technologies such as IoT, sensors, geo-positioning systems, Big Data, agricultural drones, robotics, and so on. Pesticides and fertilizer use are expected to be minimized while overall efficiency will be maximized. Also, IoT enables better traceability of food, which in turn will lead to increased food safety. Moreover, these technologies help the environment through, for example, more efficient use of water (Sciforce, 2019). Therefore, smart farming is expected to transform the agriculture environment and deliver a more productive and sustainable agricultural production so that by 2050, all 9.6 billion people can be fed in a sustainable way.

 

Bibliography

Hadju, I., 2020. Greenhouse Farming Exceeds Weather Limitations. [online] Agrivi Blog. Available at: <https://blog.agrivi.com/post/greenhouse-farming-exceeds-weather-limitations> [Accessed 26 September 2020].

Kamilaris, A., Gao, F., Prenafeta-Boldu, X. and Ali, M.I. Agri-IoT: A semantic framework for Internet of Things-enabled smart farming applications. [online] 2016 IEEE 3rd World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT). Available at: doi: <10.1109/WF-IoT.2016.7845467> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Meola, A., 2020. Smart Farming In 2020: How Iot Sensors Are Creating A More Efficient Precision Agriculture Industry. [online] Business Insider. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-farming-iot-agriculture?international=true&r=US&IR=T> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Ravindra, S., 2020. Iot Applications In Agriculture. [online] IoT For All. Available at: <https://www.iotforall.com/iot-applications-in-agriculture> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Sciforce. 2019. Smart Farming, Or The Future Of Agriculture. [online] Available at: <https://medium.com/sciforce/smart-farming-or-the-future-of-agriculture-359f0089df69> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

United Nations. 2020. Growing At A Slower Pace, World Population Is Expected To Reach 9.7 Billion In 2050 And Could Peak At Nearly 11 Billion Around 2100 | UN DESA | United Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs. [online] Available at: <https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

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Iron Ox – the future of autonomous farming

14

October

2018

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Last week the first autonomous farm in the USA was unveiled – Iron Ox, located in San Carlos, 20 miles outside of San Francisco. An unusual type of startup for the Silicon Valley,  Iron Ox focuses on the automation of the production of leafy greens (romaine, butterhead, kale and various herbs) through the use of robotics and AI.

Iron Ox is quite a nontraditional farm. Its indoor measures are only 8000 square feet and its main farmer is Angus – a giant, 1,000 pound robot. However, the company’s goal is to grow roughly 26,000 heads of crops each year by adapting a completely different farming process.

Iron Ox uses the hydroponics method of growing plants, which does not require soil, but instead uses mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. This allows the innovative farm to grow 30 times more produce per acre than a regular farm by arranging crops  in vertical and horizontal stacks. The advantages of the hydroponics method are significant: reduced use of water, sterility and space efficiency. This method, however, requires more manual labor in moving the plants. Here is where Angus’s role comes in – completing the heavy lifting, farming and sensing tasks, while humans are responsible for the more essential roles in the process – planting each seedling and packaging the finished product.

Apart from robot automation, a cloud-based, A.I., called  “The Brain” has been put into place to monitor important metrics, such as nitrogen levels, temperature, and the location of robots. In time, the company plans to increase its functions by incorporating more data and analytics of food-based trends in order to make exact decisions about what crops should be grown and in what quantities.

What is your opinion of this innovative approach to farming?

How do you think the agriculture industry will develop in the future and be affected by technological innovations?

 

Sources:

The Guardian, 2018. Retrieved from:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/08/robot-farm-iron-ox-california

The Verge, 2018. Retrieved from: 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17950502/robot-farm-future-iron-ox-agriculture-automation

 

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Urban farming: How MIT’s food computers will revolutionize agriculture

22

September

2016

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The world population is growing. Climate is changing. People are moving to the cities. Biodiversity is decreasing. Natural resources are becoming scarcer. Our current agricultural system isn’t designed for that.

With a world population of over 7 billion people and half of us living in the cities, only a small minority is involved in the production of their own food. The rest of us relies on those tasty Kiwis being shipped over from New Zealand or those yummy strawberries coming from South Africa while they’re out of season in Europe. What if we wouldn’t have to ship the New Zealand Kiwis all the way around the world? What if we could produce them right here in the Netherlands?

This is the idea of Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT’s Media Lab. He and his team are working on developing an open-source food computer – “a controlled-environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant growth inside of a specialized growing chamber”. These specialized growing chambers look like greenhouses, only with the possibility of having several levels for growing fruits and veggies – one above the other.  All kinds of variables that influence the growth of the individual plant can be changed via a computer including supply of carbon dioxide, humidity and the temperature around the roots.

Like this, you can replicate New Zealand climate in the Netherlands. As a matter of fact, you can also make up your very own climate. You can experiment with all sorts of climate variables to find out under which conditions your plants grow just the way you like them. And these “climate recipes” you can then share with all the other Open Agriculture farmers around the world.

The development of the Food Computer still is in its early stages. Instructions for building a second and improved version of the personal variant of the Food Computer are expected to become available soon. Meanwhile an enthusiastic community of agricultural hackers is sharing their experience with the first version and helping each other bringing this new technology forward.

Please check out Caleb Harper’s amazing TED Talk about the Food Computer.

 

https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in_the_future?language=en

Also, do visit their website to learn more about building your own Food Computer:
http://openag.media.mit.edu/

What do you think? Would you be interested in building your own Food Computer? Do you agree that this technology will change the way even large food producers will grow our produce?

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