Smart farming

Description of Smart farming

The 2 main concerns of a farmer are nowadays the long term sustainability of its business and its environment friendly reputation. Around 10% of the farmers are geek. The modern agriculture is deeply influenced by heavy investments in machinery and, having the prices dropping all the time, the profit on each produced item is constantly sinking. The land farming of its ancestors is not anymore intensive in labour force but in technology. The interest in technology is shifting from the farmer to the cooperative which concentrates resources and provide new services to their affiliates.

Connectivity is a major issue is smart farming since we are of course deploying solutions in rural areas. The farmer is often ready to invest in infrastructure in connectivity with base station. The remote monitoring of its assets is critical to save long distance rides in the countryside and to prevent coming plagues. One of the challenges of the smart agricutlure is to use recent collected data for future diagnosis. Phytosanitary companies are oftern interested in providing best advice to their farmers in monitoring their cultivates and optimize the use of their products. They want also to optimize stocks in deposit in the farmhouses.

Typical applications in smart farming are irrigation systems with measurements of temperature and humidity, cattle control with sometimes intrusive sensors, crop monitoring and planification. Drones are sometimes used for cartography. Wether forecast station are also a good example of use case.

The rural world is often underestimated in its capacity of technology adoption and investment.