IoT-Based Smart Farming Application for Sustainable Agriculture

Abstract

The farmers are struggling to obtain higher rate of yield due to lack of poor knowledge about the soil and water nutrients and suitability of the crop for the soil. To overcome these issues and to promote digital agriculture concept, we propose an IoT-enabled sensor system for monitoring soil nutrient [NPK] and pH of irrigation water to reduce the manual laboratory method of testing and get the results via mobile application. Smart contract farming-based mobile application will further process these nutrients value to predict and suggest the suitable crop to grow and the usage of the appropriate amount of fertilizer to increase the soil fertility. The mobile application also helps in establishing the connection between farmers and Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) in order to avoid fragmentation of profit shares and attain pricing uncertainty and marketing of the yields by avoiding the middleman. APMC is a state government body which ensures safeguard to the farmers from exploitation by large retailers. Thus, the proposed work helps the farmers in adopting stress-free farming practice by signing the contract offered from APMC to select the suitable crop for their agriculture land, dispensing the required amount of fertilizer to the soil based on soil and water nutrients analysis using IoT-enabled sensor, funding/insurance to the crops in case of occurrence of unpredictable natural disaster in future and direct marketing facility without middleman.