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Table of Content
Blog Summary:
This blog is an extensive guide for agricultural business owners, providing valuable insights on using IoT to build smart farming systems. They will learn the benefits, challenges, and common applications of implementing smart gadgets and gain better control over crop yields by automating each facet of growing crops and raising livestock with real-time insights.
Table of Content
Traditional farming decisions relied heavily on theories and concepts, which often resulted in increased expenses and time. With smart farming solutions, IoT in agriculture provides a connected environment that makes these decisions based on real-time data.
With the rising costs of fertilizers and the need for faster food production, smart farming app development helps farmers and agribusinesses make farming practices more efficient and predictable. According to Data Bridge, the smart farming market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13% until 2031, reaching USD 43 billion.
In this blog, we’ll explain more about using IoT in Agriculture, using sensors, automation, and monitoring systems to grow crops and raise livestock more efficiently by spending far less labor.
For agribusinesses, having a farm means overseeing all the important aspects—climate, temperature, terrain, soil, machinery, livestock, and crops. Each component changes over time during different seasons and can vary from field to field and even in different areas of the same field.
All of these ultimately affect the output, i.e., food production through optimized agriculture management practices. Hence, they need to know how the farm soil, crops, machinery, and livestock behave.
Their answer lies in precision farming with IoT in agriculture, which connects all these components with smart gadgets placed in different field areas. These include GPS and smart sensors that can be installed in warehouses, supply chain processes, livestock management, and greenhouses.
Collectively, they are known as the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect data, analyze it, communicate with each other, and send information to devices. This combination of sensor technology with automated hardware and monitoring software helps oversee each farming aspect over wireless connectivity.
All data sources are linked into a single control system that can either be controlled remotely from the fields or installed in their offices. The information received about water, fuel, soil, crops, fertilizers, livestock, storage, and pests helps them optimize crop yields, boost production, and increase ROI.
Maximize your crop yields and optimize your farm operations with precision agriculture and IoT.
Modern farming approaches solve the dilemma of balancing food production and carrying out sustainable farming practices. They also make harvesting crops easier for farmers and agribusinesses looking to optimize their food production. IoT for smart farming provides a network of embedded sensors to gather data and make better irrigation decisions, use fertilizers, and prevent diseases.
Earlier farmers used a lot of manual processes to control how to irrigate soil, fertilize it, and when to spray pesticides to prevent infesting. With IoT, they can easily monitor crops and inspect fields using modern irrigation technology. It allows them to plan their production better by letting them know the number of crops that can be harvested.
IoT in agriculture allows agribusinesses to exercise more control over food production lines by detecting crop growth and checking the health of livestock. Ultimately, farmers can mitigate the risks of losing their precious crops using soil and crop sensors, drone monitoring, and farm mapping through GPS systems. By understanding weather patterns and crop quality, they can increase their nutritional value.
Since climate change is becoming a global cause of distress, agricultural lands face the challenge of soil losing its quality over time. In such fluctuating weather conditions, IoT farming systems allow farming businesses to monitor their crops in real time. They can help predict issues faster and introduce automated irrigation systems and robot harvesting.
Water, energy, and land are essential resources for efficient farming practices. By optimizing the use of all these resources, IoT brings precision through the collection of data from the placed sensors and utilizing just the right amount of resources for each crop. It also helps scale down the use of pesticides and fertilizers.
Smart farming IoT is a combination of different applications that monitor livestock and inventory, track farm vehicles and machines, and observe fields. It analyzes the data it receives from sensors and weather stations through lighting, temperature, CO2 levels, humidity, soil conditions, and pests. The received data enables businesses and farmers to estimate the amounts of water, fertilizers, and pesticides that crops need to optimize farming techniques.
Forecasting is more effective than ever, as IoT farming sensors are utilized to predict crop behavior and plan irrigation schedules. By analyzing crop conditions, they can make real-time decisions without waiting for an entire new season. They can also detect drought conditions based on forecasts of water shortage, get information about optimal locations to plant crops and optimize crop watering.
Rainfall levels, climate change, and increased food demands require agribusinesses to innovate their crop cultivation methods. For better yields, they need accurate data, which IoT farming and precision agriculture provide by installing sensors, automating irrigation, and monitoring livestock, crop health, and field conditions.
These sensors easily detect and monitor the health of animals and crops, address pest infestations, and protect environments by collecting data and making it easy to interpret. They include optical, electrochemical, location, temperature, accelerometer, and asset monitoring sensors that can be installed in automobiles, satellites, and robots to reflect soil health.
These systems enhance the usage of water for cultivating crops that can be remotely controlled using smartphones and IoT mobile apps. They help reduce maintenance costs and customize watering schedules by collecting real-time data and suggesting the best ways to distribute water. They range from wireless, cloud-based, sensor-based, and data-driven irrigation systems to ensure that the crops get enough water as and when needed.
IoT-enabled solutions for monitoring cattle and herd health work on GPS tracking sensors that are worn as collars or tags. These battery-powered devices can monitor animals’ location, blood pressure, and heart rates. The data received is sent to the devices to make it easier to check in on their vital signs of health, the spread of any illness, and whether any of them has been affected.
IoT for smart farming brings ease and convenience in carrying out various agricultural activities. Ranging from indoor farming to harvesting crops and checking cattle health to livestock monitoring, IoT helps automate farming operations for small, conventional, medium, and large-scale agricultural businesses and farmers. Here’s how:
Precision agriculture includes a combination of soil sensors, satellites, robots, driverless vehicles, control systems, and automated hardware. It is a method to optimize water, fertilizer, and pesticide usage to yield healthier crops by gathering metrics like CO2, humidity, temperature, lighting, and pest infections.
Popular Examples: CropX farm management system creates precise soil field maps.
Crop management devices are placed in different areas of fields to collect crop-specific data like moisture, humidity, leaf water, and overall health metrics. They prevent crops from getting damaged by monitoring illnesses or pests. Similarly, sensors can be attached as collars or tags on animals to monitor their health and isolate the sick ones from the herd to avoid spreading the illness.
Popular Examples: Semios protects crop yields by preventing infections. CattleMax uses insights from sensors to send health updates for each cow in the herd.
An intelligent IoT farming mechanism can control greenhouse environmental conditions. Businesses can control the climate through sensors and enhance crop yields by tailoring the temperature according to plant requirements. With actuators and sensors, IoT enables automation through careful cultivation and accelerates crop growth.
Popular Examples: RED Horticulture provides lighting solutions for greenhouse automation connected via environmental sensors. Seracell leverages AI with wireless sensors to control and optimize climate, irrigation, and plant health.
IoT-connected devices utilize the power of sensors and image recognition to help farmers detect pests early and implement pest control measures. They detect pest attacks, send farmers alerts about possible infections, and compare the real-time values with their database to identify affected leaves.
These systems use smart farming IoT devices and sensors to automate irrigation schedules and structures. Farmers and businesses can change the flow of water by automating them through supply chain outlets. It continuously monitors the soil moisture and accordingly activates the pipelines over wireless communication when the minimum threshold of moisture is reached for each crop.
Popular Examples: Weathermatic is a smart water technology software that allows businesses to manage water flow through controllers and weather stations.
These systems work by installing weather stations and sensors across the farm fields to gather data on wind speed, rainfall, and humidity to detect and predict weather conditions. Based on the real-time insights, they suggest how to schedule irrigation, control pests, and make crop growth-related decisions.
Popular Examples: XWeather is an end-to-end weather prediction software that gathers accurate weather data from datasets by analyzing air quality, lightning, and environmental disasters.
Increase ROI with smarter and more efficient farming with advanced IoT sensor technology.
Smart farming offers agricultural businesses and farmers new ways to increase their crop yield while maintaining their health. With IoT in agriculture, they can refine resources, manage real-time data from one central panel, and make better decisions. However, implementation can give rise to some operational problems and challenges, which can range from:
Often, the farms are in rural areas where it’s difficult to implement a strong and reliable Internet infrastructure. Without it, accessing data gathered by the IoT sensors and monitoring systems is challenging, as there are chances that data transfer will be disrupted.
Solution: Public and private bodies can team up to extend Internet services. Satellite Internet, which offers a more accessible and long-range network, is also recommended.
The farming landscape is quite wide, which creates issues in maintaining connectivity in far and isolated areas like hills and valleys. Weather changes also create physical concerns for the IoT devices placed, which can lose data due to erratic connections.
Solution: Mesh network technology can help solve these problems in remote farms, as it provides better and more secure communication across all IoT devices. Weather-resistant devices can also be effective and provide better network connectivity.
Farmers and agribusinesses can now monitor and manage water distribution systems, control water wastage, and check livestock and crop health. IoT app development with connected devices has made it possible to help them build a custom smart farming IoT app that will provide them with real-time information at reduced costs and better productivity. Here are some factors to consider before building one:
Some basic features include data visualization, climate forecasting, and tools for managing crops. Integrating AI, sensor monitoring, and ML to predict livestock health will have a greater impact on costs.
Some sensors for detecting soil moisture, temperature, and nutrients can add more costs to app development, as the number of devices determines how the data is generated.
Our experts and Moon Technolabs recommend IoT app development solutions for Android and iOS, both on native platforms and cross-platforms. However, a good starting point is building an MVP to gauge user interests.
Adding user control access, authentication encryption, and regulatory compliance with GDPR and CCPA is important to avoid legal concerns. Lastly, remote connectivity is also essential to sync offline data, which can add additional costs.
IoT app development for agriculture is the perfect solution for agribusinesses looking to increase the efficiency of their operations. A smart farming app like SoilScout, Arable, Growlink, Cowlar, Plantix, Prospera, etc, can optimize crop yields by analyzing data received from IoT sensors. However, integrating different features and functionalities can influence the costs. Here’s an estimated breakdown:
| Basic Farm Management App | Precision Farming App | Advanced Farming App |
|---|---|---|
| Crop tracking and harvests – USD 20,000 to USD 40,000 |
Soil and environmental data monitoring – USD 4,000 to USD 6,000 |
AI-powered automated real-time insights – USD 8,000 to USD 12,000 |
| Analytics and Reporting – USD 10,000 to USD 15,000 |
IoT Sensor integrations USD 1,500 to USD 3,500 |
Remote Irrigation systems – USD 4,000 to USD 7,000 |
| Climate forecast updates – USD 3,000 to USD 8,000 |
Data-driven recommendations – USD 2,500 to USD 4,500 |
Advanced agricultural sensors – USD 2,000 to USD 4,000 |
| Total: USD 35,000 to USD 70,000 | Total: USD 10,000 to USD 20,000 | Total: USD 15,000 to USD 35,000 |
Enhance your farming operations by optimizing each aspect of the supply chain with IoT.
For modern and traditional farming businesses, IoT in agriculture promises a future that is capable of striking the perfect balance between decreasing natural resources and shrinking lands.
AI and ML will help analyze large datasets to optimize resource and productivity usage. With sensors for soil and moisture, farmers can improve their farming decisions, increase crop yields by up to 3%, reduce fertilizer usage, and identify the land areas that are most ploughable.
Blockchain ensures that every phase, from the farming field to forklifting, is recorded, verified, and transparent. Associated partners can track all important information about crops, seed quality, and growth levels and record the entire journey of a crop from when it’s plucked and sent to consumers.
Driverless tractors and drones can automate key farming processes like plantation and harvesting. Additionally, agricultural robots can respond to commands to pluck crops, control pests and weeds, and grow new seeds.
With the global population reaching 9 billion people in the next 25 years, agriculture production needs to be more efficient and smarter. Since farming land can shrink due to a lack of cultivated land and deforestation, the only way to increase productivity is by making farming operations more efficient.
With smart farming technology, you can integrate IoT App Development Services depending on the market segment, region, and weather. From tacking your cattle to monitoring field mapping, you can start upgrading your farm business today.
With Moon Technolabs by your side, you can build a powerful IoT-enabled smart farming app suitable for any farming conditions, plantations, and harvesting. Start automating your farming processes today, reduce costs, and achieve higher-quality yields. Contact us for a FREE quote.
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Jayanti Katariya is the CEO of Moon Technolabs, a fast-growing IT solutions provider, with 18+ years of experience in the industry. Passionate about developing creative apps from a young age, he pursued an engineering degree to further this interest. Under his leadership, Moon Technolabs has helped numerous brands establish their online presence and he has also launched an invoicing software that assists businesses to streamline their financial operations.
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