Boosting the smart farm revolution with LoRaWAN

Farming is one of the neglected industries when it comes to the mainstream. Yet, literally every human in the world relies on it to live. Sadly, it’s also one of the most challenging industries and it suffers from a lot of issues. One of them is yet for come into full effect but it will be incredibly difficult, unless action is taken.

We’re talking about the severe lack of enough land and efficiency when it comes to farming. According to estimates, cited by IEEE, if the global population maintains its projected growth, all agricultural processes which involve food production, will have to increase their output by 70% by 2050. Otherwise, there might be food shortage which is far from an ideal situation.

We can’t simply increase crop fields and vegetable production. There are natural limitations like available suitable land, climate specifics, soil contents, water availability and a lot more. So, we need to look for different solutions.

One of them is to increase the output of current fields and we can do that without interfering with the plants. Instead, we can simply improve our care for them and thus, they will provide better harvesting results. The solution is smart farming or smart agriculture. It’s the same idea, just slightly different names.

What does smart farming mean

Usually agriculture is seen as the furthest thing from modern technology. Yet, it is entirely possible to monitor and even control your crops from your laptop or smartphone. To do so of course you first need to invest into building a smart farm. There’s already a whole industry in place which is dedicated to make this happen.

While there are countless of possibilities and configurations, a typical smart farm will include the following tech. It will all start with sensors in the soil (and possibly on at least some of the plants) which will monitor water level, soil condition and needed additional nutrients. There can also be automated water irrigation systems which ensure water reaches each plant at the right time. Air quality, temperature and sun light sensors can also take part into the farming IT infrastructure.

All of this information can be used in a variety of ways. One option is to send it to control software which is monitored by farmers and then they would make the necessary steps. That may be turning on the irrigation, adding more fertilizer, adjusting the greenhouse temperature and so on. Another option is to have all of these decision be

made automatically by the software

in accordance with predefined parameters. These days even artificial intelligence (AI) is an option, making real-time decisions based on the dynamic data.

Depending on the type of crops, technology and approach, it is possible to significantly increase yields from the same footprint. What’s more, that can come at lower expenses, too, because you will be using resources in a much more efficient way, thus saving a lot of them in the long run. So, while the initial investment may seem steep, it has the potential to pay for itself and then some in a decent amount of time.

Communication is key

In order to have an effective smart farm, you need proper communication systems for all of the devices. A smart farm in essence is an IoT network, thus it needs high speed connections, low latency and continuous stability. All while keeping power consumption low. Oh, and it has to be wireless as it’s simply not possible to lay miles and miles of cables across crop fields.

A good choice is the LoRaWAN standard. It can cover all of the requirements and ensure that the crops are always properly taken care of.

LoRaWAN can provide up to 15km range in rural locations. And you can easily expand coverage by adding more LoRaWAN gateways. This process is simplified and allows farmers to basically have a tailor-made smart farm solution for their specific needs.

Semtech also cites use cases where its smart farm tech which uses LoRaWAN devices, have already produced significant improvements for farmers. For example, 50% reduction in water consumption for commercial farms. All of this comes with low power consumption and the sensors themselves are low cost.

There are plenty of other examples. The LoRa Alliance points out that smart farming tech can also be applied to farm animals. Among the possibilities are connected scales which weigh random animals and calculate the average weight. Sensors can track food and water levels, monitoring solutions can track and optimize reproduction conditions. There’s even tech that can analyze behavior. All of this will happen with much less human interference leading to extended pastures and increased overall quality of life thus having healthier animals.

Smart farming can also encompass the monitoring and control of machinery, gates, buildings and so on. Basically all aspects of the entire farming daily life can be covered by LoRaWAN devices and gateways to create a complete solution. There already are plenty of LoRaWAN hotspots and IoT sensors on the market that cover a vast amount of scenarios for smart farming. The standard is flexible and allows for easy customizations and to adapt to any changes in the farm’s needs. All while keeping costs down and production efficiency – up.