The Internet of Things (IoT) for Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

Increasingly, agriculture is becoming more knowledge-intensive. The challenge of feeding the ever-rising population will not be an easy task. Most of the food consumed in developed nations is provided by half a billion small-family farmers. Small-scale farming families play a critical role in increasing food production for our future food and nutritional security. However, they often have limited access to markets, knowledge, new technology and skills, new inputs, emerging value chains, and other opportunities. The development of agricultural research and its effective applications in the agricultural sector through the transfer of extension and advisory services is critical in achieving improved and sustainable agricultural production and productivity growth. Improved access to and availability to information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially cell phones, computers, radio, Internet, and social media, has created many more opportunities for multiformat information gathering, processing, storage, retrieval, management and sharing.