Case Study: Kilimo Salama

The field of agriculture provides fertile ground for IoT applications. Faced with the acute challenge of feeding a world population expected to grow by two billion by 2050, investment in IoT agriculture solutions could prove vital. IoT applications have the potential to increase both the operational efficiency of farmers and the yield of the land. So-called precision farming systems (PFS) using data from sensors measuring crop yield, moisture levels, and terrain topography can enable the targeted application of fertiliser – this increases yields whilst reducing costs, and is more sustainable. Other PFSs can steer tractors using GPS data to cover a field more precisely and efficiently than a human driver could.

Precision Farming Increases Yields

In developed countries, the precision agriculture is already advanced and widely used. In the United States alone, the market for IoT in agriculture is estimated to be around 1.3 billion US-dollars per year. Emerging countries like Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, and others have begun to adopt some PFS strategies, especially on research farms, but the adoption is still very limited. In most developing countries, by contrast, there are no specific PFS programmes due to a lack of capital, knowledge and technologies. This could also be due in part to the general perception that PFS cannot be applied to small-scale farms of developing countries – a false conclusion, although developing appropriate PFS technology for small farms remains a greater challenge for scientists and engineers.

Sensors Help In Responding To Climate Challenges

Smallholder farmers produce around 80 per cent of the food consumed in Sub-Saharan Africa. How might IoT innovations develop to respond to their needs? They are confronted with challenges such as decreasing plot sizes, hostile environments (through drought, flood or soil erosion), unstable markets and the scarcity of water and energy. For many these problems are likely to intensify in the coming years and decades. IoT innovations can offer viable solutions in some of these areas. For example, effective drought response requires precise real-time information to proactively manage water costs. Sensors and monitoring systems can help farmers to measure moisture and find leaks swiftly. As our next case study demonstrates, IoT innovations in agriculture might also help in other, maybe unexpected ways, such as integrating farmers in markets and services (see page 15) where access has previously been limited.