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Journal of critical reviews 148
Journal of Critical Reviews
ISSN- 2394-5125 Vol 7, Issue 3, 2020
Review Article
REVIEW OF INTERNET OF THINGS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN
AGRICULTURE
PALLAVI VERMA1, SAKSHAM BHUTANI2, S. SRIVIDHYA3, DR. J KARTHIKEYAN4,DR.CHONG SENG TONG5
1School of Electronics Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. pallavi.verma2019@vitstudent.ac.in
2School of Electronics Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. saksham.bhutani2019@vitstudent.ac.in
3School of Electronics Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India. srividhya.s2019@vitstudent.ac.in
4Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India.
jkarthikeyan@vit.ac.in
5Department of Language & Social Sciences, Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN), Malaysia. stchong@uniten.edu.my
Received: 05.11.2019 Revised: 10.12.2019 Accepted: 15.01.2020
Abstract
Agriculture is back bone of world’s economy and human life to survive. Agricultural Industry has more or less remained dependent on
conventional methods of farming. The farming conditions have changed significantly over last few decades. Soil Fertility, Amount of
Water for Irrigation and other resources have become scarcer but the global population has increased immensely. This calls in need for
implementation of better farming methods like precision farming which increase the overall yield. In recent years there had a gradual
increase in the usage of such systems. WSNs tell us about some problems like interoperability, communications, scalability and
connectivity. The main aim for precision farming (PA) is to increase the farming production by concerning climate, water quality, terrain,
weather and crop status. In recent years farmers are using information systems for the improvement of crop management and to
increase productivity. This leads to create a platform for managing farm activities and to improve biodiversity and to reduce the usage of
water. Such new invention should be made to enhance and develop the farming. This paper analyses and reveals how IoT can lay a strong
foundation towards sustainable development in agriculture.
Keywords: Conductivity Sensor, Green House, Pest Monitoring, Sensors Modules, Precision Agriculture.
© 2019 by Advance Scientific Research. This is an open-access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.03.28
INTRODUCTION
In today’s world as IOT has become a boon for the society for
people and country which is helping in the all-round
development in various sectors one of which is agriculture or
farming sector , where farming in done with the help of various
sensors machine such as drone which is also known as smart
farming .the arrival of farming has made the work of the farmers
easy and also increased the production of the lands .various msn
sensors are used to have the control over the irrigation and also
to keep watch over the crops. Due to combination of IOT with the
agriculture systems can help the country to grow rapidly in the
economic value and can be self-dependent in terms of food
products and farms , which can also help in the development.it
can also help in feeding the poor in i’s own country and also
across theworld.it can also increase the net G.D.P of the country
and also can help the people in the various hazards or food crisis
.Temperature, humidity, intensity level, and soil wet may be
monitored through numerous sensors. These will then be joined
to systems to trigger alerts or automatize processes like water
and air management. They will even be created to seem for early
signs of pests or malady. The use of drip irrigation system for
wetting plants eliminates waste of water and fertilizers. Sensors
area unit won’t to discover the wet and nutrient deficiencies of
plant and soil whereas the correct amount is allowed to drop
wherever it's required. As such, below or over watering is
eliminated. {this will|this will|this could|this may} be aforesaid to
be exactness agriculture and it can cause nice harvest even in dry
/drought periods of the year. Crops that area unit naturally
untouchable in time of year may be without delay created
bumper through this implies. IoT technologies facilitate the
pursuit of farm product from farm to fork, hence, all people
concerned in production, process and transportation area unit
fortified with necessary data to discharge their duties. In Nigeria,
most of the farm produces aren't perpetually accessible in
industrial amount particle an area at a given time. Hence, patrons
or middlemen go around seeing farmers that area unit able to sell
their produces at a given time and that they get from them in
bits. Transporting these products is additionally an enormous
challenge in Federal Republic of Nigeria, because of the very fact
that they're purchased in bits; the manufacture typically might
not extra service a lorry. However, with the arrival of IoT, the
transporter may be radio-controlled to others within the
neighbourhood in would like of this service. Also, good phones
may be equipped with package that may change internet/mobile
banking for each farmers and patrons to encourage cashless
transactions. Weather may be a preponderant issue to be
thought-about in crop and animal agriculture.Hence, prediction
and watching should beaccurately foreseen therefore on do
production activities to time for ultimate improved productivity.
Animal agriculture is additionally affected negatively by harsh
weather; in terms of copy, performance and production. Thus,
foretelling and watching of weather things empower the farmer
with data that may guide them in planting, gathering and
alternative production activities to be dole out. Also, policy
manufacturers may be fortified with data that may guide their
choices correctly.
IoT is starting to slowly take over the world. It has numerous
applications, but it is contribution towards agriculture is the
most. The population of the world is estimated to be 9.5 billion
by the year 2050. To feed such a large population, it is necessary
for us to use IoT in farming. With the use of IoT, we can do
several wonders in the field of agriculture. It can be used to find
whether all the livestock have returned to their shelters or not. It
can also check on its health. Precision farming can be done easily
with IoT as it can sense the soil moisture and reduce the water
REVIEW OF INTERNET OF THINGS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AGRICULTURE
Journal of critical reviews 149
usage. It can also forecast the weather, therefore making it easy
for the farmers to know exactly when to plant and yield their
crops. Coming to how it helps India, as the government is ready
to make technological advancements in villages first. Therefore,
as most of the agricultural activities happen in rural areas it is
best for them. Simple systems like checking soil moisture and
predicting weather forecast itself can make a large impact on the
agricultural development.
Advantage 1: High productivity
IoT devices will increase the production in agriculture. Farmers
place IoT devices all over the field. They can monitor better. As a
result, more production. The practice of precision agriculture has
been enabled by the advent of GPS and GNSS.
Advantage 2: Smart farming
Smart farming is done by placing IoT devices and gather data in
agricultural farms. Using soil maps, farmers can pursue two
strategies to adjust field inputs:
Predictive approach: based on analysis of static indicators (soil,
resistivity, field history, etc.) during the crop cycle.
Advantage 3: Smart management
Farmers can create smart management system by placing IoT
devices. This is a very big advantage of IoT in agriculture. As a
result, this can help farmers think less about stock management.
We can offer IoT intelligence at three levels: IoT devices,
Edge/Fog nodes, and Cloud computing. The need for intelligent
control and decision at each level depends on the time
sensitiveness of the IoT application.
Advantage 4: Time saving
As we have discussed earlier, famers can manage inventory
easily. It saves a lot of time.
Advantage 5: Better monitoring
Weather monitoring is easy using IoT. So farmers are less
worried about their crops.
LITERARY SURVEY
Gill, S. S., Chana, I., & Buyya, R. (2017). IoT in India can
revolutionize the future of India’s economy. As our country has
such a large population, it is necessary for us to grow crops at a
larger rate if we don’t want to have hunger problems in the
future. The lacks of knowledge of the farmers are the only
drawback. It is difficult for an uneducated person to use IoT
efficiently. Therefore these products should be made more
simple for them so them they can also understand their working
and use them properly. In India the farms are fragmented, so it
not required for them to actually use IoT. For now, it is not as
effective to the Indian farmers as how much it is effective to the
farmers abroad. There, most farms have started to use one of the
applications at least. The applications are good but a little
development to make it cheaper and easier to use would make it
expand exponentially in Indian farms.
TongKe, F. (2013) Since China has become a leading user of IoT
in agriculture, it is good for developing countries like us to start
and learn the various processes from them. Their economic
development has increased rapidly due to this. There are some
flaws as well. They focus too much on the hardware and they
forget about the software. Since most farmers are poor, they are
satisfied with the hardware that they get and they don’t worry
about the software. There is another matter to be discussed. Most
farmers in India have farms which are small compared to that of
the farms present in the foreign countries. As IoT helps mainly
the big farms, it is not advisable for the small farmers to use
them. Therefore, it would be better if these farmers unite and use
IoT on the whole for all their farms together.
Khairoowala, Z. U. (1987). Now coming to the uses of IoT in
agriculture. Mostly people think it reduces labour. That is a part
of its use but it is not the main use. Almost the same amount of
labour is required to do agriculture with IoT. Actually, it requires
more educated people to operate these complex systems. In
villages in India, many farmers are not educated and therefore it
is hard for them to use the technological advancements of today’s
world. The main uses of these systems are for monitoring and for
controlling various action. As the farms are big, it is difficult for a
farmer to go to various parts if the farm to observe his plants or
animals. With IoT it is not an issue. Cameras and sensors can
observe this and constantly send information to the farmer about
the status of the animals and plants. The shelters of the domestic
animals have sensors which tells the farmer whether the animal
is there in it or not and even the time in which the animal has
returned after grazing.
Shirode, M., et.al. (2018) Checking the water quality is a major
use of IoT in agriculture. Many plants die due to the pollution of
water so it is necessary that we use good quality water. Several
sensors are used in the water quality detection device. Some of
them are the turbidity sensor, the temperature sensor, electric
conductivity sensor and the pH sensor. pH sensor measures the
pH level of water and makes sure it doesn’t become acidic or
basic. Conductivity sensor measures the conductivity while the
turbidity sensors measure the amount of the suspended particles
found in that water. All these sensors not only read the
information and give it to the farmer it can also change the values
sometimes. Like for example the temperature sensors not only
finds the temperature of water, but it can also change the
temperature to the desired value. This water monitoring system
is very cheap and it is affordable even for the poor.
Na, A., Isaac, W., et.al. (2016). After water comes the soil. The soil
monitoring or the soil testing is a process in which these devices
test the quality of the soil. As different plants require different
soil content it is necessary for us to know the soil content before
we plant a particular plant. There are three tests which are taken
for the test soil. One is the soil moisture content and the ability of
the soil to retain moisture in it. This is very much required as the
moisture content in the soil is the main factor for transpiration
and respiration. The second measurement is the bulk density
measurement. Density is the ratio between mass and volume.
Here also it is the same. The density of the soil is very much
required as it affects the seed germination and root penetration
process. It is also related to the absorption capacity of the water.
After this comes the respiration test where they find the gases
present in the pores of the soil. As the plants breathe it is
necessary to know about the compounds it is breathing as well.
Rawal, S. (2017) Coming to the next use the irrigation process.
Plants require water at certain intervals. Especially different
plants require water at various intervals. Though the farmer can
remember the intervals it is hard to keep watering them at that
particular time. With the help of IoT, it is not at all a issue. This is
the most widely use application in agriculture. There is a
network of sprinklers or dripping systems connected to a main
device. There are sensors kept for each plant as well. Once the
moisture content in the soil of a particular plant goes below the
programmed level, the dripping system is turned on
automatically and the plant receives sufficient water. With this
machine, the process of watering the plants can be forgotten.
This can be semi-automated or fully automated as well. Fully
automated is not recommended as it does not read the weather
conditions. If a rain is going to come and the soil is dry, it will still
give water. To avoid such wastages, semi-automated is better.
Akkaş, M. A., & Sokullu, R. (2017) Altering the temperature with
IoT in green houses is a minor use. It works on a simple principle
like how the smart AC’s work. Sensors are kept on the outer part
of the green house. According to the outer temperature and
humidity, the temperature inside can be altered and therefore
making it suitable for the plants to sustain.
REVIEW OF INTERNET OF THINGS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AGRICULTURE
Journal of critical reviews 150
Shi, Y., et.al. (2015). Scientific disease and pest monitoring is the
most advanced use of IoT in the agricultural in industry. Pest
monitoring cannot be done for all the plants in the farm as it is
not feasible. The pest monitors can be kept for a group of plants
or for one plant for a particular species. This detector is very
specially designed and it is very costly as well. Once the device
detects that the plant is affected, it immediately send out a signal.
So it is very easy for the farmers to find and cure them as it
would be in the early stages. Some devices even spray chemicals
on the plants when they detect pests, but they are so expensive
that it costs more than what the plants yield. This field needs
more development and certainly the cost of such devices needs
to come down to be available for a common man.
Ntafis, V., et.al. (2008) Monitoring of animals is a tiring task for
the old farmers. They have to sacrifice their time while the
animals are feeding on grass. The future is not going to be like
that. Animals are going to go grazing on their own without
human guidance. This is possible with the help of IoT. Firstly the
doors of the animal shelters can be controlled through the
internet and therefore the farmer can open the gate whenever he
wants. Then the animals are fitted with a tracking device which
lets the farmer know where his cattle is exactly grazing. There
are sensors kept in the sheds so that it is easy to find whether all
the animals have returned or not. Some counters are also used to
keep count of the cattle. Most domestic animals cause loss to
their owners because they die early due to several diseases. To
avoid this, same like what they use for the plants to monitor the
pests, they use devices which can detect the diseases which are
going to affect a particular cow or goat. So, it can easily be cured
in the early stage itself. Farm machinery can be controlled
through IoT. All the machines are controlled with IoT. Machines
like tractor, hog oil, reaper, winnowing machine, drag harrow
and threshing machine. All these machines can be controlled
through the internet, but these are too costly even for a middle-
class man to buy. These machines are automated only in super
farms. So, it is not applicable to use them. This can reduce man
labour.
Mohanraj, I., et.al. (2016) Horticulture part in India is reducing
step by step which influences the creation limit of biological
system. There is an urgent need to take care of the issue in the
area to re-establish dynamic quality and make it work on
advanced improvements. This research suggests an e-Agriculture
Application reliant on the assembly embracing of Knowledge
base and monitoring modules-KM. To obtain on lucrative
selections, planters need the complete data collected throughout
the complete cultivating cycle. The required data is self-indulgent
in diverse spots that integrate the ongoing data. To be very
precis, the data should have the advertise costs and existing
generation potential details together with the manageable vital
harvest evidence. An information dataflow model is established,
correlating altered disseminated cradles to the revenue
structures. Our world is in the process of being mechanized
supplanting labour-intensive methodology with the progression
of innovation, as it is vitality proficient and engage negligible
labor. The study also proposes the upsides of using ICT in rural
division of India that demonstrates rustic ranchers the way to
supplant a portion of the regular methods model of the system is
completed utilizing TI CC3200 Launch pad interconnected
sensors modules with other important electronic gadgets. A
relative report is made between the created framework and the
current frameworks. The framework defeats impediments of
customary horticultural strategies by using water asset
effectively and furthermore lessening work cost.
Lerdsuwan, P., & Phunchongharn, P. (2017, March). The
development of Agricultural Industry in Southeast Asia is very
crucial. There is a very strong need to collect data, perform
analysis on this data and then apply this analysis to perform
precision agriculture so as to increase crop productivity. In order
to make this IoT system reliant sensors capturing the data should
be able to adapt to new/ different environmental conditions
without affecting the data they are collecting. The system should
be able to compress and transmit this data using algorithms so as
to minimise the packet drop and energy usage. Data-collection
framework to increase energy efficiency includes the following
methods- listening mode, collecting data mode, transmitting data
mode, sleep mode and idle mode. All these modes work in a
closed cycle one by one so as to reduce the energy consumption
of the IoT system.
Reddy, S. A., et.al. (2018) the important thing for crop farming is
water irrigation. This project aims at developing an automatic
irrigation structure using sensors, with Internet we can remotely
control the system using a Android smart phone or any computer
device. So that the agriculture lands are irrigated automatically,
without any physical presence of human. Smart irrigation for
agriculture using IOT provides a solution for the old people and
physically challenged people to do farming. The smart
agriculture is to provide higher productivity and better resource
when we compared to traditional methods which gives low
results. It plays an important role in identifying the temperature
according to their weather report. Data about their agriculture
fields and weather report are provided by IOT sensors.
Environmental conditions, which are the major factor to increase
the fields of their crops and productivity, will be implemented by
using IOT. IOT is the network of physical devices which
interconnects the information sensing devices such as sensors
etc. It exchanges the information and communicates through the
wireless or wired network. The sensors collect the information
on temperature, soil moisture, humidity etc. Our aim is to supply
the water using IOT when the farm is dry and to remove the
excess of water content. We use the sensors in IOT based smart
irrigation. Sensors collects the information on temperature, soil
moisture, humidity etc. and sends to the gateway. The Gateway
sends the information to the smart phone or computer devices
whether to supply the water when the land is dry or to observe
the water when the land is of superfluous of water, Sensors
controls the water management system. To avoid the entrance of
other unfamiliar constituents than water, the pipes are fitted
with filters.
Dlodlo, N., & Kalezhi, J. (2015) Most of the references in the
domain of greenhouse horticulture deal with monitoring and
control of the greenhouse climate using advanced sensors for e.g.
temperature, humidity, ventilation and irrigation. Similar to
other domains, applications for livestock farming are focusing on
precision livestock farming, that includes monitoring, early
warning systems and control. Several references pay particular
attention to animal welfare. Open air horticulture focuses on
monitoring & control of products. Other themes like early
warning and pest management, traceability, expert systems and
internet trading, micro-irrigation and Big Data. From the
applications in the areas above several generic themes are found,
in particular precision farming in arable- livestock farming and
horticulture, food traceability, food safety and quality
management and consumer interaction.
FINDINGS
IoT has many uses. Usually much technological advancement has
some side effects but this one doesn’t have any. Its applications
are numerous and every day it’s increasing. Mostly people think
it reduces labour. That is a part of its use but it is not the main
use. Almost the same amount of labour is required to do
agriculture with IoT. Actually, it requires more educated people
to operate these complex systems. In villages in India, many
farmers are not educated and therefore it is hard for them to use
the technological advancements of today’s world. The main uses
of these systems are for monitoring and for controlling various
action. Checking the water quality is a major use of IoT in
agriculture. Many plants die due to the pollution of water so it is
necessary that we use good quality water. After water comes the
soil. The soil monitoring or the soil testing is a process in which
REVIEW OF INTERNET OF THINGS TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AGRICULTURE
Journal of critical reviews 151
these devices test the quality of the soil. Coming to the next use
the irrigation process, plants require water at certain intervals.
Especially different plants require water at various intervals.
Scientific disease and pest monitoring is the most advanced use
of IoT in the agricultural in industry. Farm machinery can be
controlled through IoT. IoT has started to change the approach
towards agriculture, making it much simpler and much easier to
use. Almost all the problems faced by the farmer can easily be
rectified with the IoT system and therefore making farming an
exciting task.
Some of the reports are more positive after implementing IoT in
agriculture. It is noted that in some places people used to call this
as “Agriculture Doctor ". IoT is enabling service centres for
farmers to give suggestions on planting, harvesting, agricultural
spraying calendar to watering calendar. In our India, agriculture
is the one of the major sector and people there have a lot of
traditional farming techniques ever like ditch irrigation, terrace
irrigation, drip irrigation and sprinkler system. The world needs
enormous productivity solve hunger of people but poor
performance and decrease availability of water can’t solve this.
So in order to achieve this goals to get fulfilled we can take help
of the methodology like precision farming, smart green homes
etc. Good food makes one’s life better and the best.
Wireless sensor systems and pervasive systems, where the
sensors will be associated with and constrained by inserted
frameworks, where administrations embody the usefulness and
give bound together access to the usefulness of the framework.
The IoT building squares of automation and machine-to-machine
correspondence continue being set up. The extension of the
organization layer shapes the total IoT structure. Hybrid
correspondence plans appear to be the best fitted answers for
IoT applications. The rise of incorporated handsets which
incorporate numerous correspondence advancements on a
solitary chip has opened entryways for increasingly productive
remote correspondence.
CONCLUSION
IoT is one of the greatest technological advancement seen today.
There are many aspects that are needed to be kept in mind while
implementing these IoT solutions. First and foremost, these
devices should come at an affordable cost so even poor farmers
with less land can implement these solutions. Secondly, these IoT
devices should be easy to implement (plug-and-play) so even
illiterate farmers without much knowledge can use these devices.
These devices should be able to produce the processed data and
suggestion in simple terms i.e. complex numerical data cannot be
understood by most farmers so analysis of this data in simple
form is required. Lastly, these devices should be specifically
tailored for different sectors in agriculture like fruits, arable
crops, trees, large scale scraps etc. We as humans have greatly
advanced in the field of technology over the past centuries of
existence of mankind on this planet. Reading through the various
agendas that IoT possess is extraordinary. Use of IoT to monitor
the various environmental changes such as soil fertility, rainfall,
use of pesticides, quality and quantity of crops, behaviour of a
crop etc, is being stored, processes, then decisions are being
taken by the system and implemented. The data stored can be
shared to farmers even in the most of remote places and can be
used by them to increase and improve their produce. The
response to the situation is quick and almost immediate. Use of
GPS robot to help the farmers in petty problems such as weeding,
spraying of fertilizers and pesticides, controlling animals and
birds in the field, etc. After the crops have been produced even
the transportation can be done by using IoT and then distributed
to the consumers at ease. Thus, the whole process can be
controlled by IoT cloud, which is extraordinary.
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