The 2015 growing season is already underway, as diligent farmers sow seeds that become fruits and vegetables that supply nutritious calories to the populace. People have come a long way since they stopped hunting and gathering food in small nomadic tribes, but where are today’s farmers headed to grow crops for an exponentially expanding society in an ever-changing environment? In both rural and urban settings, outdoor Wi-Fi, wireless sensors, and wearable technology can give farmers the edge they need to produce the best yields to sell at the highest margins.
Throughout the agricultural timeline, smart farming, also known as precision farming, is still in its infancy, but as a sapling, it has enormous potential. The benefits of having a web-connected farm include reduced labor costs, decreased pollution and erosion, access to advanced analytical tools such as up-to-date economic conditions on crop futures, weather data and crop labeling for diseases, pest infestation and genetics. deformities IP video camera systems can monitor cattle and their handlers 24 hours a day. A GPS-guided tractor can follow a carefully planned path to maximize seed distribution with minimal use of fertilizer. Clay Mitchell of Waterloo, Iowa, is a pioneer of smart farm technology. He regularly works with agricultural companies to incorporate his engineering expertise into new equipment that improves yields and sustainability. In a world of limited resources, Mitchell and other thought leaders will usher in the future of agriculture, where automation and data analytics help produce successful crops season after season.
Creating such a system for a farm is not without its challenges. There are many courses of action that a future farmer could take. An intranet with a massive WLAN could be built to keep data stored locally, but any cloud computing technology will require backhaul provided by a wireless Internet service provider. A Power over Ethernet system could span the entire property, or a deployment of solar panels and/or wind turbines could supply electricity independent of the power grid. Should farmers hire a specialized agricultural IT company for an implementation or build it themselves? What manufacturers of wireless hardware and protocols are you going to use? There are too many variables for easy answers and, in all likelihood, each individual farm will require a unique solution.
But what if the burden of food production could be shifted from the fields to the cities closest to where the consumer lives? Now with the technology of the Internet of Things, it is possible. Insulated from natural disasters like floods and droughts, an urban farm allows for granular control of resources. As water scarcity increases and traditional agriculture consumes around 80% of the country’s water supply, the use of automated resource management processes will avert a crisis. Traditional indoor agriculture uses hydroponic systems to supply water and nutrients to plants. However, these systems are cost prohibitive and not economically viable compared to rural agriculture. But there are innovations coming to market that could change urban farming methods, like Click & Grow’s Smart Herb Garden. It uses a new sponge-like soil material that efficiently delivers nutrients, water and oxygen to crops. The full-scale Smart Farm system, scheduled to begin full-scale retail distribution in 2016, allows resource management from a computer program. It is imperative that this type of technology achieves widespread adoption as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicts that global food production must increase by 70% by 2050 in order to feed the population.
There are many more new ideas on the horizon that will make it easier to become a do-it-yourselfer farmer. CoolFarm is another central management app that makes farming easy on your smartphone. Any city dweller can live and work while growing their own food, or possibly get into the farming business with a vertical farm. Those who have the space to do so can even help save the biodiversity of beekeeping products. The human race depends on industrial bees to pollinate a wide range of foods. It is unacceptable to allow colony collapse disorder to decimate the bee population to extinction, but a web-connected device could solve this problem. Eltopia’s MiteNot can sterilize male bees containing the microscopic varroa destroyer mite by detecting when females have laid their eggs before males have fertilized them, warming the hive just enough to kill parasites while keeping bees safe, without the use of pesticides. Sensors inside a MiteNot circuit board, camouflaged and embedded within the combs of a beehive, calculate how to time this process via a cloud-based app. This device is still in the testing phase, but could hit the market in the fall of 2015.
If there’s a particular purpose for five billion useful web devices by the end of this year, and forty-five billion more by 2020, it’s hard to think of one more relevant than smart agriculture. Successful implementation that increases yields and reduces waste could make or break civilization. New trends in technology could lead to a revolution in agriculture, such as drones surveying fields to manage pest control, or the upcoming 802.11ah wireless protocol that uses the 900 MHz band and is capable of managing 8,000 devices at at the same time within a radius of one kilometer. The goal of the industrialization of agriculture is to make it easier to produce large amounts of food at a reasonable cost, and as long as scientists and engineers work together with farmers to continue to achieve that goal, everyone can look to the future with full bellies. .