Agriculture And Iot: 8 Technology Use Cases

Using IoT sensors, farmers can collect various metrics on every facet of the field microclimate and ecosystem: lighting, temperature, humidity, soil condition, CO2 levels, and pest infections.

FREMONT, CA: Here are the types of IoT sensors for agriculture as well as IoT applications in agriculture in general:

1. Monitoring climate conditions

Most widespread smart agriculture gadgets are weather stations, combining different smart farming sensors. Located across the field, they gather various data from the environment and send it to the cloud. The given measurements can map the climate conditions, choose the right crops, and take the required measures to enhance their capacity (i.e., precision farming).

2. Greenhouse automation

Generally, farmers use manual intervention to control the greenhouse environment. However, IoT sensors enable them to get accurate real-time information on greenhouse conditions such as lighting, temperature, soil condition, and humidity.

Including sourcing environmental data, weather stations can automatically adjust the conditions to match the given parameters. Especially greenhouse automation systems use a similar principle.

3. Crop management

One more kind of IoT product in agriculture and another precision farming element is crop management devices. Like weather stations, they should be located in the field to collect data specific from cropping farming, temperature and precipitation to leaf water potential and overall crop health.

Thus, you can monitor your crop development and any anomalies to effectively prevent diseases or infestations that can harm your yield.

4. Cattle monitoring and management

Similar to crop monitoring, IoT agriculture sensors can be attached to farm animals to monitor their health and log performance. In addition, livestock tracking and monitoring help collect data on stock health, well-being, and physical location.

5. Precision farming

Also familiar with precision agriculture, precision farming is about efficiency and accurate data-driven decisions. It’s also the most widespread and powerful application of IoT in agriculture.

Using IoT sensors, farmers can collect various metrics on every facet of the field microclimate and ecosystem: lighting, temperature, humidity, soil condition, CO2 levels, and pest infections. This data allows farmers to estimate optimal quantities of water, fertilizers, and pesticides that their crops need, decrease expenses, and raise better & healthier crops.

6. Agricultural drones

One of the most hopeful agritech advancements is using agricultural drones in smart farming. Also called UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), drones are better equipped than airplanes and satellites to collect agricultural data. Besides surveillance capabilities, drones can also perform many tasks that previously required human labor: planting crops, agriculture spraying, fighting pests and infections, crop monitoring, etc.

7. Predictive analytics for smart farming

Precision agriculture and predictive data analytics go together well. While IoT & smart sensor technology are a goldmine for favorably relevant real-time data, data analytics support farmers in making sense of it and coming up with important predictions: crop harvesting time, the risks of diseases and infestations, yield volume, etc. In addition, data analytics tools help make farming, which is inherently highly dependent on weather conditions, more manageable and predictable.

8. End-to-end farm management systems

The so-called farm productivity management systems can represent a more complex approach to IoT products in agriculture. They usually include several agriculture IoT devices and sensors installed on the premises, a powerful dashboard with analytical abilities, and in-built accounting/reporting features.

This provides remote farm monitoring capabilities and allows you to streamline most business operations.

Including the listed IoT agriculture use cases, some prominent applications include vehicle tracking (or even automation), storage management, logistics, etc.