The Future of Farming The Benefits of Smart Agro for Farmers

Categories: TECHNOLOGY

The Future of Farming: The Benefits of Smart Agro for Farmers

Precision agriculture, commonly referred to as smart agriculture, is the application of technology to enhance farming methods and increase yields. To assist farmers in making more informed decisions regarding their crops and livestock, it involves the integration of numerous technology such as sensors, GPS mapping, drones, and data analytics. Following are a few advantages of smart agriculture:

Improved Quality: Smart agriculture can help farmers improve the quality of their crops and livestock by providing them with real-time data on factors such as soil moisture, temperature, and nutrient levels. This enables farmers to make informed decisions about when to harvest, thereby ensuring that the crops are of the highest quality. One of the best aspects of smart farming is the time savings. Autoguidance software is used by self-steering tractors to go along waylines on their own.

Increased yields: The quality of the crop is impacted by over- and under-spraying, which results in patchy regions of burned plants and stunted underperforming plants. Section Management allows farmers to cultivate dependably even and healthy crops while maximising yields by removing over and underlaps. Overseeding is avoided by drilling using Valtra Guide. The driver must manually turn on and off seed drills in accordance with conventional farming practises. This may result in mistakes and double drilling in certain regions at the headland. When this occurs, an excessive number of plants will attempt to grow there, fighting with one another for nutrients, light, and water. This inevitably results in lower yield in certain places.  

With the help of Smart Farming autoguidance, the driver can focus on the task at hand, which relieves tension and conserves energy for more intricate labour, like at the headland.

Improved fuel efficiency: Farmers may now be considerably more accurate thanks to smart farming. By minimising overlaps, a task can be completed in fewer passes, requiring a tractor to travel a less distance overall. This not only saves time, but also fuel. Even a little reduction in the number of passes needed to complete operations like mowing can add up over many hectares.

Smart agriculture helps farmers increase their efficiency by providing them with access to real-time data on their crops and livestock. This reduces waste and boosts productivity since farmers can decide with confidence whether to irrigate, fertilise, or use pesticides.

Sensors: The system's various sensors enable to monitor factors such as soil moisture, temperature, solar radiation, atmospheric pressure, air temperature, air humidity, oxygen level in the soil, soil water potential, luminosity, etc.

Sustainability: Smart agriculture promotes sustainability by reducing the environmental impact of farming practices. By minimizing the use of resources, farmers can reduce their carbon footprint and protect the environment for future generations.

The sustainability of farming can be enhanced in a variety of ways. From cutting down on spray waste to enhancing fuel efficiency. Soil compaction is minimised by lowering the number of passes required to fulfil duties and by lowering turning on the headland.

Lower driver stress: Stressful tasks include working long hours and focusing intently on keeping straight lines while handling tools. There are numerous ways that Smart Farming can lessen the strains of regular job. Autoguidance takes care of keeping the driver on a straight track, allowing them to focus on the tool and work at hand. The sprayer may be turned on and off without any guesswork thanks to Section Control.

Reduce harmful emissions: Smart agriculture captures carbon dioxide from the environment, reduces harmful gas emissions, and prevents deforestation.

Reduced Costs: Farmers can cut expenses by utilising fewer resources, such as water, fertiliser, and pesticides, by employing smart agriculture strategies. Furthermore, smart agriculture enables farmers to locate places that require development, enabling them to make improvements and avert costly errors.

Better Planning: Smart agriculture allows farmers to plan better by providing them with accurate data on weather patterns, soil conditions, and other factors that affect crop growth.

Importance Of Mobile Apps For The Agricultural Industry:

With the right agriculture app development, the app could essentially become a marketplace where farmers could shop for and compare all the important items they need to boost production.

An agriculture mobile app can solve a wide range of issues. These fall under the broad categories where mobile applications can be especially helpful.

i. Providing Information: A mobile app may be able to provide farmers with crucial information to improve their planting, cultivating, and harvesting.

Weather forecasts, information on diseases, and new products to help farmers boost crop yield are just a few of the types of information that can be sent through popup windows.

Aside from enabling the industry's nascent labour to be trained and guided, agriculture app development can also enable seasoned farmers to easily adopt new practises.

ii. Offering Financial Services: Farmers may access excellent financial services through mobile apps. Payments, loans, and standard banking services are all included when we refer to financial services. Also, the mobile app might aid farmers in choosing an insurance plan and enable them pay for it via the app.

iii. Easy Access To Input Markets: In general, it's crucial to have simple access to input markets while creating agricultural applications. The inputs contain all the things a farmer requires to conveniently run his farm, such as:

•  Seeds
•  Fertilizers
•  Pesticides
• Irrigation system
•  Electricity
•  Workers

Regardless of climate change, precision agriculture, sometimes referred to as smart agriculture, helps to maintain food production with a minimum amount of resources including water, seeds, and fertilizer. The sensors in the system help minimise harmful environmental consequences while regulating or monitoring the intensive use of resources.

iv. Easy Access To Output Markets: Another significant difficulty that farmers face is selling. The development of agriculture apps is essential for closing this gap. Farmers can provide price information, market data, and the connection across supply chains by developing a mobile app.

In other words, agriculture app development enables farmers to establish a brand-new market where they would have the ability to manage and assess numerous goods while having the chance to advertise their own goods.

v. Increased Efficiency: Efficiency improvement is the sole goal of implementing new and emerging technology for business. The agricultural sector experiences the same thing. Consider this. Imagine the level of efficiency the industry would experience if high-tech equipment and farm app development were combined.

Smart irrigation equipment, improved communication, and GPS tracking can all work together to increase productivity and save farmers a tonne of time.

vi. Payments: Mobile applications are an excellent instrument for payments that have the ability to reduce bother for both farmers and end users. A payment gateway has been included into the app, making the process simple and quick.

There are several agriculture-related mobile applications available now that help farmers work wisely and proactively to achieve their goals.

Mobile apps have emerged as more practical and effective in a few domains, despite the fact that mobile software is already well-liked and widely employed in this business.

The usage of marketplaces, disease management, drones, and location services in mobile farm apps has become increasingly common.

One of the leading firms for developing agriculture apps is RNF Technologies, and our team of talented mobile app developers has experience creating outstanding farming applications.

The future of farming:

The agri-food sector's continued research, innovation, and capacity building efforts, which are backed by several multi-financial framework programmes, are influencing the future of agriculture. These programmes offer essential funding for creating and putting into use cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), robotics, and digital platforms that are revolutionising agriculture and assisting in the creation of a more sustainable and effective food system. We can build a better future for farmers, consumers, and the environment by sustaining our investments and working together.

Initiatives in Horizon 2020 to Digitize the European Agriculture Sector

The use of digital technology for the agriculture sector received more than €200 million in R&I funding through Horizon 2020.

Horizon Europe

The development of sustainable and equitable food systems through research and innovation in the agri-food industry is a major focus of Horizon Europe, the European Union's research and innovation framework programme. In fact, significant funding has been committed under Pillar II, Cluster 6, to assist initiatives connected to food, the bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture, and the environment, including the use of digital solutions for the agricultural sector.

The main objectives of the new Common Agricultural Policy:

Ten goals make up the new European Agricultural Policy 2023–2027, one of which is a cross-cutting goal on digitalization, knowledge, and innovation. Member States can encourage digitalization in agriculture and rural regions by using CAP instruments.

• ·        competitiveness
• ·        Fair Income
• ·        Knowledge and Innovation
• ·        Food & Health
• ·        Rural Areas
• ·        Generational Renewal
• ·        Food Value chain
• ·        Climate change
• ·        Environmental care
• ·        Landscapes

The Farm to Fork strategy:

A cornerstone of the EU Green Deal, the Farm to Fork plan has ambitious goals for producing food sustainably by 2030 that call for technological solutions. IoT technology were effectively deployed in an IoF2020 use case on arable farming to optimise pesticide use and produce crops fit for human consumption. In order to coordinate investment efforts and strengthen Europe's position in the global cloud and edge computing market, the European Commission will support the research, development, and deployment of next-generation cloud infrastructures and services across the EU. It will also support the establishment of the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge & Cloud.

In conclusion, smart agriculture has the potential to revolutionize farming practices by improving efficiency, reducing costs, improving quality, promoting sustainability, and enabling better planning. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see more farmers adopt smart agriculture techniques to optimize their yields and profits.