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3 reasons why modern farmers are adopting IoT technology at an amazing rate

It seems that everything today is touched in some way by the Internet of Things. It is changing the way goods are produced, the way they are traded, and the way they are consumed. Much of the conversation around IoT has revolved around transformation in industries like manufacturing, petrochemicals, and medicine, but one industry that has already seen widespread adoption of IoT technology is often overlooked: agriculture.

Of course, many of us are very familiar with some of the efforts that have been made to optimize food production. As populations continue to grow, there has been a serious and sustained push to increase crop yields from our available farmland. Some of these efforts have not been particularly popular with consumers (ie pesticides, GMOs).

With the advent of new technologies and the Internet of Things, farmers are finding new ways to improve their yields. Fortunately for us, these new ways are decidedly less disruptive than toxic chemicals and genetic manipulation. Using sensors and network communication, farmers are discovering ways to optimize already known best practices to increase yields and reduce resource consumption.

If it is surprising that the agricultural industry is technologically innovative, it is worth considering how agriculture is, in many ways, an ideal test bed for new technologies.

There are some good reasons for this:

1. Ease of implementation

Unlike in other industries, deploying sensors and other connected devices on a farm can be relatively easy and inexpensive. In a heavy industrial setting like a factory or refinery, new technology must replace old technology that is fully integrated into the production infrastructure. There are concerns about downtime and lost revenue, as well as how to find the right products or groups of products to integrate into your existing technology ecosystem. On a typical farm, there is no need for downtime, and there is usually no concern about any existing technology that may be incompatible. Inexpensive sensors placed in various parts of a cultivated field can quickly generate highly useful actionable data without interrupting a single process.

2. Instant Value

Another reason agriculture has provided such a fertile testbed for IoT technology is the speed with value and ROI that can be achieved. Pre-existing precision farming metrics can be applied more easily, maximizing the already known benefits of established practices (knowing what types of crops to plant, when, knowing when and how much to irrigate, etc.). Farmers have also been successful in controlling pests safely and naturally through the intelligent release of pheromones. Of course, there is the obvious and very tangible benefit of decreased resource consumption and increased performance. A modest investment can produce measurable results in a single season.

3. Continuous value

In agricultural IoT deployments, the same practices that provide instant value will continue to provide value as long as they are employed. Water conservation and waste reduction provide repeat value, as does the increased yield that precision agriculture provides. There are also opportunities to improve the equipment farmers use every day. A connected combine or tractor can record useful information about its operation and maintenance. It can also allow certain processes to be optimized and automated.

There are some real concerns about our ability to feed our ever-growing population in the future. While controversial technologies like genetically modified organisms have helped increase food production, these techniques aren’t exactly popular with the general public, several of whom have raised concerns about the long-term impact of a genetically modified diet.

The good news is that similar increases in food production are possible without the need to modify food; we simply have to modify the processes used to produce it. And it’s not just about food production. The plants are also used for biofuels and as a raw material in manufacturing. By increasing yields and reducing resource consumption, growers also have a positive impact on many other industries.

For example, a Colorado-based company called Algae Lab Systems is helping algae farmers improve their production by introducing sensors to measure environmental factors such as temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen in their photobioreactors and algae ponds. . Algae farmers can now continuously monitor their crops from anywhere, also allowing for larger, geographically dispersed operations.

A case study detailing algae laboratory systems provides insight into how they are transforming the algae farming industry and aquaculture in general.

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