AgroTech: Grow more, with less by using IoT

Agriculture is one of the most ancient human practices. By learning to grow plants and domestic species, ancient human societies avoided the necessity to move to find food. Thereby, our ancestors had the opportunity to choose a fixed place to live, establishing towns and more complex societies. Thanks to agriculture, humanity could focus on thinking about other things, like the world around them, giving place to philosophy and science; driving us finally to our present civilization.

Agriculture has been and will be a fundamental activity for human survival and evolution, but agriculture itself has evolved too as humanity has been developing new techniques and technologies. Nowadays, agricultural practices face new challenges that require new and more effective methods.

The most significant challenges could be global warming and overpopulation. Due to overpopulation, agricultural practices must be more productive, in order to cover the growing demand. Nevertheless, global warming is continuously harming crops and livestock, which ruins a big percentage of the yield. Thus, the constant monitoring of the environmental factors, preventive actions and quick reactions to problems become decisive for the success of agricultural practices.

Some of the most common environmental factors that should be monitored and controlled in agricultural practices are humidity, temperature and light. Also, there are frequent activities that should be done, such as irrigation, fertilizing, pest control, and livestock feeding and care. This set of actions can be performed easily in small crops and with few animals. But, what about the extensive fields with thousand animals and a large variety of crops?

Think about how many time is needed by the farmers to cross the extensive fields of each crop, checking the state of a variety of conditions plant by plant and animal by animal. It could become really hard when we talk of hundreds or thousands, implying a lot of farmers, a lot of time, and probably a lot of resources wasted.