How Internet of Things(IoT) can transform agriculture in Pakistan
IoT or Internet of Things already made enough penetration in our daily life in terms of Smart Homes, Internet connected Fitness trackers and Industrial monitoring. With the evolvement of new Protocols and prototyping services, it became easier to build any IoT solution at prototyping level and then improve it further upon successful testing of the prototyped model, thus converting into a full and final product. A visualization by iMOBDEV is shown below.
Besides Industries like healthcare and Transportation, IoT causes a major impact on one of the oldest human profession i-e agriculture. With the use of Robotics, Drones, automation systems and Drip irrigation like technologies, we have moved a step further from traditional agriculture towards precision agriculture.
Agriculture, as a backbone of Pakistan’s economy, if impacted properly by the smart solutions based on Internet of Things and wireless sensor networks, can transform the way we produce, cultivate, irrigate and monitor our crops. Below are some considerations before planning to deploy such a system in agriculture:
- · Data Acquisition – How we are going to collect the data and upload it to the cloud? Which type of sensors do we need to extract a specific type of data from our farm? What are the microprocessors and internet-connectivity technologies involved?
- · Data Analysis – Once we collect the data, how is it going to be analyzed? Which value does the collected data can generate and what are the algorithms require to process that data in order to extract the value we need? How the processed data will become beneficial to the farmer?
Sensors are the major component of any IoT system as they build the base by doing the hard work for our system – collecting the data. Although there a number of agricultural sensors available to help in precision farming, but they are either too expensive or the whole system is too complicated for a Pakistani farmer to understand.
Another thing to consider is the need for awareness of technology supported farming. There are a number of areas where the people are still using the agricultural methods of 19th century. A fraction of benefits which can be achieved by deploying IoT in the farm are as follows:
· Crop Monitoring – Monitoring of crop production and crop yield can allow a better control over the entire farming process and can also help in early detection of disease or any abnormality in crops. Monitoring can be extended from soil moisture and humidity to soil PH levels, nature of soil and number of nutrients present in the soil.
· Weed Mapping – An optimally designed visual solution can allow the farmer to take care of weeds that can cause harm to crops. The final statistics can be used to prevent any loss in future.
· Irrigation Control – A crop monitoring system featured with an automatic water irrigation system can help to irrigate crops automatically when required. This can also save water loss and may generate an alert for the farmer based on the changing climate or weather conditions.
Conclusion:
In the light of benefits and advantages provided by the stack of modern technologies, it’s badly needed that we apply optimal techniques and systems not only to monitor and control our agricultural needs but also to revolutionize cattle farming in Pakistan. The systems explained above can not only reshape agricultural methods but can also cause a huge positive impact on Pakistan’s economy.
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