Figure 1. Hierarchy of Possible Applications, Sensors and Service for Smart Agriculture (Ayaz et al., 2019)
Agriculture is an important activity in our country for a long time. The agricultural business expects a fundamental part of rural development. In India, about 70% of the people rely on farming and 33% of the country's capital comes from farming. Despite the improvements in the agricultural sector, there are issues that hinder the development of the country. To solve these issues smart agriculture (modernizing the existing agriculture methods) plays a significant role. Hence, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview of IoT based agriculture, role of IoT in agriculture, benefits of IoT, and reasons for implementing IoT in agriculture sector.
Agriculture is the essential and most useful occupation as it provides food grains and other raw materials that are imperative for human life. In addition, agriculture is one of the most important factor on which the growth of country's economy depends, because it offers large numbers of employment opportunities. However, many farmers still use traditional farming methods, which leads to a reduction in the efficiency of agriculture. Hence, IoT (Internet of things) based smart agriculture is necessary to increase the efficiency of farming sector (increase the yielding of crops and fruits) (Gondchawar & Kawitkar, 2016). IoT includes the use of many related gadgets. In the present life, nearly everything is done by utilizing sensors. Sensors are embedded in each real contraption. Monitoring environmental conditions like temperature, humidity, moisture can improve yield of the crops, if it could be controlled by informing the farmer through available technologies (Sushanth & Sujatha, 2018). The data for analysis is taken from various sensors connected with agricultural implements through IoT. The data are acclimatized with existing datasets, to make useful decision making (Singh et al., 2019). Finally, the result is given to different gadgets for better customer experience, automation and further developing efficiencies (Chandel & Kumar, 2016).
There are numerous businesses that employ the IoT technologies have amplified from 13% in 2014 to 25% today. However, the worldwide number of IoT-connected devices is estimated to enhance to 43 billion by 2023 (Gartner, 2017).
With the advancement and implementation in the latest sensing and IoT technologies in agriculture sectors, every aspect of conventional farming techniques can be essentially changed. Presently, IoT in smart agriculture and seamless integration of wireless sensors can raise agriculture to levels which were earlier unimaginable. IoT based smart agriculture improve the solutions of many conventional farming issues. These issues include drought response, land suitability, irrigation, yield optimization and pest control. The main applications, services and wireless sensors used for smart agriculture are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Hierarchy of Possible Applications, Sensors and Service for Smart Agriculture (Ayaz et al., 2019)
Internet of Things (IoT) can be characterized as a gadget that can be controlled through the web. IoT gadgets have become widespread in consumer markets. It is assessed over 30.9 billion gadgets could be associated with the Internet of Things by 2025 (Levin, 2018). The primary objective of utilizing IoT in agriculture is to meet growing needs and reduce production losses. Various gadgets such as robots, drones, remote sensors and computer images are being used to make the Internet of Things triumphant. They are joined with persistently advancing AI and logical devices. IoT has been utilized in agriculture to screen yields, review and manage the fields. IoT also give information to farmers in smarter farming and aid managers to save both time and money (Kodali & Sahu, 2016). The role of IoT in the agriculture field is shown in Figure 2. In addition, a technical assessment of IoT for the Indian Agriculture Sector is shown in Figure 3.
The various applications of IoT in agriculture are summarized below (Balaji et al., 2019).
Figure 2. Role of IoT in Agriculture (Farooq et al., 2020)
Figure 3. A Technical Assessment of IoT for Indian Agriculture Sector (Sharma et al., 2016)
Precision farming is a technology-based approach to farming management that observes, measures, and analyzes the requirements of individual crops and field (Cropin, n.d.). With the target of streamlining water and compost, precision cultivating is being utilized. It upgrades efficiency, quality, and yield. This term additionally includes limiting vermin and sicknesses through exceptionally designated uses of exact measures of pesticides. It includes the utilization of innovation. It has changed over the customary cultivating methods into innovation-based cultivating strategies. The critical segment here is its utilization. Different things like sensors, advanced mechanics, self-governing vehicles, mechanized equipment, control frameworks, etc. are utilized in precision farming (Auernhammer, 2001).
The Smart Greenhouses has many benefits over conventional farming. With smart greenhouses, we can produce pesticide and insecticide free crops. In addition, we can create a climate for the proper growth of plants and even provides alternative source of income through apiculture, selling tube well water, etc. Furthermore, smart greenhouse can be installed by any individual, who does not have knowledge about farming. One can maintain any climatic condition and decrease 70% to 80% water need. It also enhances the yield and growth rate and produces organic agricultural products (Kodali et al., 2016).
Agricultural drones are very functional in Smart farming. An agricultural drone is an unmanned aerial vehicle utilized to assist and optimize agriculture operations, and monitor crop growth. Digital imaging and sensors capabilities can give farmers a realistic aerial view of their fields. In this way these views can assist in assessing production as well as crop growth (Dutta & Mitra, 2021).
Drones offer major cost savings, enhanced efficiency, and more profitability, incorporated GIS planning, convenience, and saves time. They can quickly survey vast farmland. Drones are used:
The IoT devices help in livestock monitoring. Farmers are now be able to observe which cattle are sick and then separate them from the herd to prevent the spread of disease. Now, farmers can easily identify if their cow needs to be milked at that time by using livestock monitoring. Not just that, also the milking amount and speed can be measured (Germani et al., 2019). The amount of food a cow consumed and the number of steps she walked can also be checked.
This help in tracking the condition of business and equipment efficiency.
The benefits of IoT in agriculture domain is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Benefit of IoT Based Small Agriculture (Sarkar et al., 2018)
Four things to keep in mind before developing a smart farming solution (Farooq et al., 2019).
In order to build a IoT based solution for agriculture, one must firstly choose a sensor or a device. If unable to choose any one, then design a custom one. The choice or design of any device or sensor must rely upon the data one need to gather or on the rational behind data.
Every smart agriculture solution must be based on some out of box idea that uses data analytics. There is a need of powerful data analytics capabilities.
The most important factor in IoT based smart agriculture is maintenance of hardware. So it is necessary to ensure that the hardware which is used must be durable and easy to maintain.
It is needed to have a solid internal infrastructure to ensure the efficient performance of smart agriculture applications.
With soil disintegration, reduced land availability, increasing weather changes, and animal attacks on crops, farmers must grow more food as the competition for food is increasing. Thus, the IoT allows farmers to detect these conditions and manage food production. They can figure out such issues even before their happening and can perform measures in order to control them (Wijaya & Sinaga, 2019; Jindal et al., 2021).
The population is growing fast. In the near future, it is estimated that about 9 billion people will survive on the planet, and almost 70 percent of them will live in urban areas. IoT based greenhouses can feed people as they can shorten food supply chains. Closed-loop intelligent farming systems allow us to grow food crops even in supermarkets, shipping containers and even in the comfort of the home (Antony et al., 2020).
The main focus of dozens of IoT-based agricultural solutions is upon enhancing the use of resources that are basically water, energy, and land. Peasants can accurately allot only required resources within each plant using the concept of precision farming that depends upon the data accumulated from various sensors in the field (Lee et al., 2013).
IoT-based precision farming not only enables farmers to conserve lots of agricultural resources but also facilitates in reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Increasing the use of these unhealthy chemicals reduces the nutrient content of food, and therefore by implementing IoT in agriculture, results in a cleaner as well as organic end product.
Thanks to real-time monitoring and forecasting systems that are based on IoT, as they have proven their effectiveness in agriculture, i.e., With such systems, farmers can quickly withstand significant climate changes such as humidity, weather, air quality, etc. The predictive capability of IoT devices, help farmers to protect their farming and yield.
More and better products can be grown using datadriven agriculture. The concept behind it is that farmers farmers are able to recreate better environment and increase the nutritional value of the product through better recognition of detailed relationships between atmospheric phenomenon and quality of their crops using soil and crop sensors, aerial and drone monitoring, farm mapping, etc., (Math & Dharwadkar, 2018).
IoT-based techniques also facilitate farmers to monitor the conditions of their livestock. They can collect data regarding the location, health as well as the well-being of their cattle.
For example, they can find out the sick animals among the herd and hence separate them from the rest others, thereby preventing the spread of the disease among all.
IoT-based weather stations are equipped with smart sensors where special software can analyze the data regarding weather, collect it, and can send useful information regarding it to the farmers. As an example, the use of the IoT based product all Meteo can present the farmers a special software which can monitor the farm and indicate the extreme temperatures, rainy weather, frosts, etc., conditions through the early warning alarms (Shah & Bhatt, 2017).
In this way, farmers get ready made analysis helping them in preventing heavy crop losses.
Greenhouses are capable of adjusting the conditions automatically with respect to match the parameters given by and thereby weather stations, simulating suitable conditions plantations inside. The device used in this concept is “Green IoT”. This device makes use of smart agricultural sensors. It facilitates remote managing of the irrigation and lighting systems (Liqiang et al., 2011).
Just similar to the sensors for monitoring of the weather conditions, there are sensors available that have the capability of detecting all the information such as the health of crops, temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. These also help framers to recognize which moment is best to grow which particular crop including the factors like weather, atmospheric conditions, fertility of soil available for the crop, etc. Thus, farmers become able to identify any deviation earlier if it persists and can grow their products accordingly.
“Semios” is the best IoT based project in this context (Kour & Arora, 2020).
Drones facilitate a wide range of applications in the context of precision farming. Some of the examples include soil analysis, planting as well as spraying of pesticides and insecticides, analysis regarding crop fields and many more. These are the powerful invention of IoT that provides the appropriate technology towards agricultural development.
Various new imaging technologies such as thermal, multispectral, hyperspectral, etc., can be used in conjunction with drones, which can enable farmers to obtain information on specific areas.
If dryness persists in the agricultural fields, drones are able to detect them. Thus, farmers can use better techniques to irrigate such fields.
The eBee X is an agricultural drone that is capable of covering hundreds of acres in one single flight in order to efficiently monitor crops and pursue another regarding the analysis.
Farmers face problems due to labour crunch in working a at the field level, such as planting, weeding, harvesting, etc. In such a situation, implementation of technology in automating the farm activities and management would be a great help to the farmer community in India. This paper presented ongoing research activities in India that are aimed in providing technology driven solutions for the farmers. The technologies mentioned are mostly IoT driven which integrates devices and ICT technologies.
The demand for food in India is likely to grow with the growing population, therefore technology driven automated solutions, especially using IoT will yield sustainable agriculture in India.
The inclusion of IoT is envisioned to be valuable for improving the farming and agricultural industries. It has been observed from the literature that the Internet of Things (IoT) has made up new opportunities in agriculture field. In addition, IoT based agriculture is a complete solution to field activities, storage problems and irrigation problems using smart irrigation system, remote controlled robot and a smart warehouse management system respectively. Overall the use of IoT based smart agriculture help us to improve the yield of the crops and overall production.