The Potential Impact of Internet of Things on the Agriculture Industry

This article discusses the potential impact of Internet of Things (IoT) on the agriculture industry. It explores how IoT can improve precision farming, surveillance through agricultural drones, monitoring of livestock, and creating mini greenhouses. The article also covers the regulation and ethics of IoT and how it can disrupt traditional farming techniques.

Running head: THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
The potential impact of Internet of Things on the agriculture industry
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

2THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Table of Contents
Research.....................................................................................................................................3
Brainstorming.............................................................................................................................4
Regulation and Ethics................................................................................................................4
Disruption...................................................................................................................................5
Video transcript..........................................................................................................................8
References................................................................................................................................10

3THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Research
The Internet of Things or the IoT is a concept that is in rise with the advancement of
science in the field of development and technology. IoT is a network that enables the devices,
appliances and other hardware systems are able to connect with a particular server using a
dedicated software, sensors and electronic mechanisms (Wortmann & Flüchter, 2015). The
exchange of information between the devices and the network server help the devices to
respond to the flow of the instructions. The devices equipped with latest technologies of IoT
are able to create more opportunities for the integration of workflow with the present world.
These opportunities are in the form of increase in the overall productivity, cost benefits,
radical improvements and a sound reduction in the human efforts. IoT is the technology that
involves the extension of the internet over the next level that is beyond the common devices
such as the standard desktops, laptops and the mobile devices.
The devices that supports the implementation of this technology in the real world are
able to communicate and interact over the internet. These devices can be easily monitored
and controlled according to the requirements. The application of IoT can be on several among
agriculture is one of them (Dlodlo & Kalezhi, 2015). IoT has a lot of applications in the area
of farming and agriculture. These applications are in the form of collection of data on
temperature, humidity, precipitation, amount of the on field pests, direction and speed of
wind along with the condition of the soil. This important collection of the information can be
used to analyse the present condition and make substantial improvement of the assets
accordingly. With the use of IoT in agriculture, it is possible to control the amount of waste
produce while cultivating the croplands and using the fertilizers to get the desired outputs
(Yong, Pengcheng & Fei, 2013).

4THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Brainstorming
If viewed with a broader approach it will be seen that IoT has a number of
applications in the field of farming and agriculture. There are number of ways through which
the technology will be able to bring in a positive impact on the different aspects of agriculture
(Da Xu, He & Li, 2014). These aspects are in the form of precision farming, surveillance
through agricultural drones, monitoring of the livestock and creating mini greenhouses.
The areas of the agriculture is prone to several kind of risks such as the negative
impacts of improper irrigation, inadequate rainfall, poor soil quality and improper harvesting
methods. These issues can be easily solved with the help of precision farming techniques. IoT
also helps in building up strategies and plan according to the needs of the situation (Ye et al.,
2013). IoT using the drone technology can benefit a lot to the farmers and the on field staffs.
The IoT embedded drones are useful in surveying and mapping of the crops and the fields.
These devices are also useful in the monitoring if the livestock. This technique is used for the
detecting out the health of the cattle and also used to prevent the cattle thefts. They are also
used to create mini greenhouses that facilitates the cultivation of the crops using the wireless
sensors (TongKe, 2013).
Regulation and Ethics
Generally, four regulators govern any particular entity. The great professor and
activist Mr. Lawrence Lessig in his theory of the pathetic red dot have explained this concept.
The four regulators mentioned by him were the law, market, architecture and the norms
(Lessig, 2009). Laws are the regulators that are framed by the governments, the standards of
the economy sets up the market, the norms are framed by the society while the architecture is
devised by the standards of designing and manufacturing. The revolution of the Internet of
Things as technology has been huge in the fields of farming and agriculture. Not only just in

5THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
the field of farming and agriculture but also in the impact of IoT has been huge in various
sectors such as healthcare and transactions.
To benefit out of the advantages of the Internet of Things it is essential to limit the
access of communicating and interacting internally (Ziegeldorf, Morchon & Wehrle, 2014).
Here the factor of norms come into play where specific instructions are set such as
monitoring, surveying and detecting the specific areas required for farming. One of the
governing factors of IoT related to the market factor is that, it is important to adhere to the
economical standards of pricing and tagging of the embedded appliances to be used in the
farming practices
Disruption
IoT has been able to bring a lot of modifications in the field of agriculture and
farming. Cultivation and the harvesting of crops without the implementation of the embedded
IoT devices is very much tedious and time consuming. In addition, the productivity is
nowhere to the desired outcome (Stoces et al., 2014). It is due to the fact that there is no prior
information of the present conditions available through which situations can be judged.
Unavailability of live monitoring also affects the condition of the crops at times. Traditional
farming techniques involved the inclusion of a large amount of the human labour. Since there
was no possibility of knowing the conditions of the soil, it was difficult to determine whether
it will be beneficial to cultivate lands in a particular set of time. Moreover, the infestation of
the pest is difficult to determine for which the crops were often damaged (Baranwal &
Pateriya, 2016). To counter that situation, chemical fertilizers are used. However, the
improper knowledge about the amounts may also result in the damaging of crops.

6THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Figure 1: Traditional form of agriculture
(Source: Author)
With the emergence of IoT in the agricultural services, it will be easier to sort out the
above mentioned problems. The presence of the sensors will be able to sense the
temperatures, the condition of the soils, the timely irrigation requirements and the amount of
pests in the field (Ferrández-Pastor et al., 2016). With involvement of the live monitoring, it
will be easier to locate and detect the present conditions of the livestock such as the cattle and
the sheep herds. In addition to it, the irrigation requirements can easily be analysed by
judging the amount of precipitation and the humidity in the air. The IoT aims at reducing the

7THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
human labour to a minimum level through which the involvement of the number of farmers
can be brought down and the enhancement in the productivity can be increased (Channe,
Kothari & Kadam, 2015).
Figure 2: IoT based smart agriculture
(Source: Author)

8THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Video transcript
00:00 – 00:15: IoT has been able to bring a lot of modifications in the field of agriculture and
farming. [pause] Cultivation and the harvesting of crops without the implementation of the
embedded IoT devices is very much tedious and time consuming.
00:15 – 00:30: [pause] In addition, [pause] the productivity is nowhere to the desired
outcome. [pause] It is due to the fact that there is no prior information of the present
conditions available through which situations can be judged.
00:30 – 00:45: [pause] Traditional farming techniques involved the inclusion of a large
amount of the human labour. [pause] Since there was no possibility of knowing the
conditions of the soil, [pause] it was difficult to determine whether it will be beneficial to
cultivate lands in a particular set of time.
00:45 – 01:00: [pause] Moreover, the infestation of the pest is difficult to determine for which
the crops were often damaged. [pause] To counter that situation, chemical fertilizers are used.
[pause] However, [pause] the improper knowledge about the amounts may also result in the
damaging of crops.
01:00 – 01:15: [pause] With the emergence of IoT in the agricultural services, [pause] it will
be easier to sort out the above mentioned problems. [pause] The presence of the sensors will
be able to sense the temperatures, [pause] the condition of the soils, the timely irrigation
requirements and the amount of pests in the field.
01:15 – 01:30: [pause] With involvement of the live monitoring, [pause] it will be easier to
locate and detect the present conditions of the livestock such as the cattle and the sheep herds.
01:30 – 01:45: [pause] In addition to it, [pause] the irrigation requirements can easily be
analysed by judging the amount of precipitation and the humidity in the air.

9THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
01:45 – 02:00: [pause] The IoT aims at reducing the human labour to a minimum level
through which [pause] the involvement of the number of farmers can be brought down and
the enhancement in the productivity can be increased.

10THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
References
Baranwal, T., & Pateriya, P. K. (2016, January). Development of IoT based smart security
and monitoring devices for agriculture. In Cloud System and Big Data Engineering
(Confluence), 2016 6th International Conference (pp. 597-602). IEEE.
Channe, H., Kothari, S., & Kadam, D. (2015). Multidisciplinary model for smart agriculture
using internet-of-things (IoT), sensors, cloud-computing, mobile-computing & big-
data analysis. Int. J. Computer Technology & Applications, 6(3), 374-382.
Da Xu, L., He, W., & Li, S. (2014). Internet of things in industries: A survey. IEEE
Transactions on industrial informatics, 10(4), 2233-2243.
Dlodlo, N., & Kalezhi, J. (2015, May). The internet of things in agriculture for sustainable
rural development. In Emerging Trends in Networks and Computer Communications
(ETNCC), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 13-18). IEEE.
Ferrández-Pastor, F. J., García-Chamizo, J. M., Nieto-Hidalgo, M., Mora-Pascual, J., &
Mora-Martínez, J. (2016). Developing ubiquitous sensor network platform using
internet of things: Application in precision agriculture. Sensors, 16(7), 1141.
Lessig, L. (2009). Code: And other laws of cyberspace. ReadHowYouWant. com.
Stoces, M., Vanek, J., Masner, J., & Pavlík, J. (2016). Internet of things (iot) in agriculture-
selected aspects. Agris on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, 8(1), 83.
TongKe, F. (2013). Smart agriculture based on cloud computing and IOT. Journal of
Convergence Information Technology, 8(2).
Wortmann, F., & Flüchter, K. (2015). Internet of things. Business & Information Systems
Engineering, 57(3), 221-224.

11THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF INTERNET OF THINGS ON THE AGRICULTURE INDUSTRY
Ye, J., Chen, B., Liu, Q., & Fang, Y. (2013, June). A precision agriculture management
system based on Internet of Things and WebGIS. In Geoinformatics
(GEOINFORMATICS), 2013 21st International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.
Yong, H., Pengcheng, N., & Fei, L. (2013). Advancement and trend of internet of things in
agriculture and sensing instrument. Transactions of the Chinese Society for
Agricultural Machinery, 44(10), 216-226.
Ziegeldorf, J. H., Morchon, O. G., & Wehrle, K. (2014). Privacy in the Internet of Things:
threats and challenges. Security and Communication Networks, 7(12), 2728-2742.