What is smart farming?
What is smart farming technology? In fact, the smart farming definition might vary depending on the subsection of the tools and devices used in the field.
In this glossary section, smart farming is a subsection of agriculture that predominantly uses IoT technology, AI, big data, and automation to assist farmers in enhancing their agricultural practices. Climate change threats, a growing global population, and raising environmental concerns have sped the growth of smart farming technologies.
Benefits of smart farming
Smart farming using IoT technologies brings numerous advantages to farmers and society in general:
- Improved performance. Regardless of the immense experience that many farmers possess, smart farming IoT applications further deepen their expertise and connect it with the newest farming methods.
- Facilitated crop yield. Achieving better produce is a central purpose of smart farming. Concentrated on the need to get more crops with less effort, smart farming using IoT applies precision monitoring and data management to manage the land with better accuracy.
- Environmental sustainability. Green benefits of smart farming are undeniable. Farmers control greenhouse gas emissions, observe the impact they have through their practices, and avoid human mistakes leading to pollution or wildlife harm.
- Healthier crops and livestock. The advantages of smart farming extend to cattle and plants under care. For example, smart collars check the temperature, health, and location of farm animals while plants receive just the right amount of pesticides or nutrition to grow fast.
- Cost reduction. Automation and cutting back on resource use help farmers reduce their expenditures on unnecessary tools or resources. Even if they can be costly at first, they have a highly long-term orientation.
- Security assurance. Vast territories that are challenging to cover on foot or by vehicle are better left to monitoring using smart farming solutions designed specifically to notice and prevent any outside threats.
IoT use cases in farming
Since we have covered smart farming meaning and smart farming benefits, we can explore the fundamental ways to apply it:
- Updates on water, soil, and air quality due to smart farming IoT solutions.
- Livestock management is easier with smart farming technology put in animal collars or drones that can keep up-to-date status on every head.
- Precision farming allows farmers to make adjustments based on what every crop needs without overindulging in chemicals or maintenance.
- Production prediction makes estimating the total end product much more exhaustive.
- Smart greenhouses provide automated lighting, temperature, and humidity.
- Irrigation relies on land moisture and plant conditions.
Things to consider when implementing smart farming solutions
The variability of smart farming applications requires farmers to make a well thought out decision on adopting such technologies into practice. Here are the main things to consider:
Unique land qualities. Before a farmer asks themselves “What is smart farming?”, they should evaluate their territory and soil quality and what they need to work with.
Data evaluation tools. You may need to explore software to collect and analyze the data that works based on the criteria above.
Managing the system. Additional and often ignored costs that farmers might overlook are maintenance and repairs of the hardware. Therefore, the initial sensors and equipment should be appropriate for your weather conditions.
Infrastructural possibilities. Study examples of smart farming to understand how specialists with similar sizes and scopes of production develop internal infrastructure to achieve stability.
IoT connection. All the devices in the farmers’ IoT system must have a smooth internal interaction to avoid mistakes that damage the entire operation process.
Periodicity of information collection. Ask yourself how often you need to gather your data and what type. For example, soil, water, aerial, and other characteristics of the environment need to be accumulated comprehensively and on time.
Protection. Tampering with agricultural data is relatively rare, but it is not non-existent. Farmers need to address possible issues associated with hacking and data theft and implement preventive security measures.