5G Has Made A Big Promise to The Farm of The Future

To maintain the balance and keep the IoT Gods happy, whenever a truly useless example of IoT is created, so must one be created that helps society in some way. That is the rule… probably. When the USD2,499 Laurastar ironing system — featuring a “motion sensor and connectedness” — was conceived, the balance was temporarily upset. Fortunately, around the same time, so was the idea of ‘Smart Farming’ dreamt up.

IoT continues to seep into more aspects of our lives, promising big shifts in how people, businesses and society as a whole go about their day-to-day activities. In 2017, 821 million people went undernourished (source: United Nations), and with food requirements expected over the following decades as populations continue to grow, farming is going to need a radical overhaul. IoT is dipping its toes into the agriculture industry, hailing the promise of not only more sustainable agriculture, but increasing production for higher yields, and expanding the profit margins of farmers.

The Dairy Industry is No Cash Cow

The life of a farmer is arduous, and none more so than that of the milk and dairy farmers. Undoubtedly you will have seen articles pop up time to time proclaiming the plight of dairy farmers barely getting by, being bullied by supermarkets and other injustices. Governments often have to step in in order to stabilize milk producers as the profit margins are miniscule or nonexistent.

However, Smart Farming — or precision agriculture, should you wish to sound more sophisticated — is revolutionizing the industry. It is enabling farmers to better optimize every step of their processes, not only savings costs that in turn means more profit, but also doing so sustainably by reducing harmful emissions and mitigating the effect on the environment.

There’s no shortage of success stories. The Smart Farming initiative in Ireland works primarily with smaller farmers in key areas — such as energy usage, soil fertility and machinery — to improve their processes. In one of their case studies for example, optimizing machinery by turning off the tractor during idle time and altering tire pressure to suit the weather and ground conditions together achieved a saving of EUR 365 (≈ USD 430). They say every little helps, and they weren’t wrong. Overall, that particular farm saved upwards of EUR 8,300 (≈ USD 9,750). Optimizing and automating systems can spell huge differences, even for smaller farms.

Key Technologies in The Development of Smart Farms

At its core, precision agriculture is the collation of data from hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of devices and then its analysis to provide improved decision making. The transformation of farms though is still in what can be claimed to be as the early stages. According to a report by Eurostat (the European Statistical Office), in a survey of dairy farmers in Germany, only 18% of those surveyed have adopted milking robots, 2.6% have adopted feeding robots or automated feeding systems and only 0.6% have embraced body scoring condition technologies.

Agricultural applications have also been adopted by just over half of all those surveyed. However, they are only used for basic tasks such as: obtaining weather information, information on crop monitoring, protection, or fertilization. However, respondents also claimed that by 2030, 49% expect to have deployed autonomous tractors, 45% plan to have deployed drones and finally, 43% have envisioned utilizing autonomous field robots.

If nearly half of respondents claim they have no agricultural applications, this could suggest that current standards of data collection and their analysis do not really provide much benefit over a farmer’s own gut feeling. This demonstrates a divide between the data that farmers expect they should be able to have access to, and what they are actually getting. However, they are optimistic about what could develop over the following decade. It does make the path to autonomous tractors by 2030 seem to be a treacherous path up a mountain, rather than a walk in the park though.

Getting a Sense of Things — The Golden Triangle

There are three key elements to a smart farm:

Sensors (or IoT) — Everything on the farm can be monitored through widespread use of sensors strategically placed to optimize operations. Some examples may include pH sensors to measure the acidity of the soil, temperature sensors, and moisture sensors to measure adequate water levels. These all create data and readings that can be used for analysis.

The Network — All these sensors are nothing without a network with which to unify them so that all the readings and data can be transferred to a central point (either locally, or the cloud). 5G and related technologies will undoubtedly see big growth within the agricultural sector, especially if we are to expect developments such as field drones or autonomous tractors.

Analysis of Big Data — The sensors are creating troves of data every day which needs to be analyzed in a way that lends insights that can be actioned. An example could be used in soil sampling: a pH sensor can monitor over months or even years that in a particular area of a field, the alkalinity is too high, thus being detrimental to crop production. However, by spreading some limestone over the area, the pH can be raised to suitable levels and thus increasing crop yield.

Key Connectivity Technologies Identified

Of this golden triangle, there’s currently a corner that’s not pulling its weight: the network. The sensors exist, as does the software to analyze the wealth of data, however the network is currently hampering the development of precision agriculture. These devices and sensors require immense amounts of resources and data speeds, with little tolerance for lag. As the quantity increases too, creating exponential amounts of data, 4G is seeing its limits.

5G is something that can facilitate this explosion in data needs, and we are gradually reaching a tipping point. It’s the revolution networks need and makes autonomous farms something actually feasible. It is an also essential for enabling edge infrastructure, where increasingly more of the computing is being done at the edge, rather that remotely in order to cut down latency, essential for things such as autonomous tractors. With the introduction of real-time two-way communications and accuracy, data can be shared more quickly and efficiently. Meanwhile faster and more accurate management decision making will improve machine performance, productivity and increase yields.

Conclusion

Precision agriculture promises a lot, especially in terms of increasing yields to the meet the nutritional needs of still growing populations, while being sustainable in the long term. Whether it makes good on its promise though is dependent on external factors. Much of it will hinge on connectivity — specifically 5G — and how it connects thousands of devices. The next decade will prove an interesting one, and many observers will train a keen eye on the developments of the agriculture, with a lot resting on how 5G develops, and how policy facilitates its utilization around the globe.

As the number of IoT devices increases exponentially, it has become more important than ever to maintain low latency, unbroken connectivity. The D-ECS tool offers essential management features for optimizing cellular connectivity for a wide range of M2M and IoT devices crucial in a precision agriculture scenario, keeping a handle on things even as operations expand and become increasingly complex.