The holiday season is upon us and no matter what tradition you observe, people the world over are getting ready to gather with family and friends to celebrate and feast. What does the IoT have to do with your holiday buffet? Plenty!
Despite drought and concerns about climate change, plentiful farming yields are on the rise in part due to the exploding “smart farming” sector, which uses M2M and IoT technology to optimize food production.
IoT technology is a farmer’s new best friend, helping them track livestock, manage field irrigation, keep tabs on farm machinery and buildings and even keep honeybees buzzing and pollinating. The “connected countryside” is providing farmers with real time data to help them wring every last drop of productivity out of their land and machinery, and add to the bounty of this year's holiday buffet. Not only can innovative farming technology track a flock’s movements and record data about individual animals, wireless devices worn by the animals can create a mesh network to provide connectivity across remote areas where there is no mobile or Wi-Fi signal.
According to Cisco, there are more than 16 billion people, processes and devices connected to the internet today, and that number is expected to rise to more than 50 billion by 2020. While some of those devices are connected thermostats and enterprise devices, others are agricultural devices installed everywhere from cattle pastures in Scotland to oyster beds in Australia.
Blending Old and New to Overcome Obstacles
Technology and data might be the newest tools farmers can use but in order to be truly effective, they need to integrate with traditional tools already deployed on the farm. Understanding how to use both the new and the old is the key to achieve best results. M2M cloud platforms that can work with any device and all networks like the SensorLogic Application Enablement Platform are key to tying old and new together.
For instance, smart data might help improve understanding of moisture variability across a field of strawberries but that data has to be accessible to the farmer for real time decision-making and action. If the data indicates that only five acres of your 50-acre field needs water but your irrigation system can only be turned on or off for the entire field then the data is not very useful.
Smart farming technology is evolving quickly and food producers are seeing the value and getting used to the convergence of today’s digital world with traditional farming culture. At the same time, more and more attention is being paid to developing wireless networks in rural areas that often have patchy and sometimes expensive network access, whether cellular, broadband or satellite.
Overcoming hurdles with standards and cooperation
Just like with consumer and business technology, the lack of standards that allow different technologies to work together is a challenge. Interoperability between systems is key, especially in rural areas that may need to rely on several different technologies. To overcome this roadblock, sharing data and best practices is key to advancing the greater good.
One thing is clear, today’s new smart farming technology is promising. Farmers have new ways to gather actionable intelligence that can help improve productivity, save costs, conserve resources and improve visibility of crops and livestock even while working in the farm office. And while visions of data have not yet replaced dancing sugarplums in the dreams of modern farmers, the plenty of this year’s holiday buffet table has been expanded by the growing Internet of Things.
Edited by
Ken Briodagh
