Sara Ali Manager   •   almost 2 years ago

Preparing sustainable environment for farmers

"According to UN Food and Agriculture Organization, we need to grow 70% more food to feed the additional 2.3 billion population by 2050. How to meet the increasing demands with the limited natural resources, and with the impact of climate change, has become the key issue the world is facing. That’s why the agricultural industry needs digital transformation and technical innovation the most now. IoT technologies can improve crop yield by eliminating waste, driving operational efficiently, and establish secured food supply chain. Here are the key capabilities of IoT that make it essential to the future of agriculture.
Most of all crop losses are due to weather related problems and bad management by the farming teams. With the IoT platform that can integrate IoT and weather data, we would be able to build predictive weather modeling. It can provide the insights that help farmers to make strategic decisions on planting crops and take necessary actions to prevent the damage caused by extreme weather. With weather data, farmers can even build advanced irrigation systems to save water and prevent pesticide waste by predicting.
The IoT platform can integrate sensor data from soil and environment sensors. The insights generated from that data can help farmers make better decisions and therefore drive high performance. This solution can monitor the plant environment 24/7 in real-time, sensor data from soil and environment, getting information such as plant health, soil moisture, CO2, sunlight, rainfall, air, humidity and more. It helps farmers to improve crop productivity and operational efficiency by taking strategic actions guided by Agriculturist
This leads to Precision Agriculture and is aimed to help farmers use data to make precise decisions from planting, growing, harvesting, to transporting food. The farmers and stakeholders in the ecosystem are encouraged to implement advanced technologies to use the resources efficiently and optimize yield. We can fight the food shortage together and create a sustainable future for the next generation with the Internet of Things.
Farming is a highly labor-intensive activity. Technologies deployed by precision farming increase productivity, decrease labor overheads, and enable optimal use of resources. Furthermore, automation is extremely important for large-scale farm operations. Precision farming products add to the bottom-line savings by eliminating/reducing labor cost. Cost efficiency allowed by precision farming has the potential to make farm operations profitable, creating a demand for precision farming among farmers.
Labor and tasks performed before harvesting—such as weeding, application of fertilizers, and site inspections—account for about 50–70% of the agricultural operations cost. Precision farming makes use of technology to harvest data, which can then be used to remotely run farming processes on farming sites; some of these automatic processes are spraying, weeding, pruning, and harvesting

The precision farming market has been segmented based on application into yield monitoring, field mapping, crop scouting, weather tracking and forecasting, irrigation management, inventory management, farm labor management, financial management, and others. Yield monitoring is the most widely used application in farming as it plays a vital role in understanding field variability and helps farmers in maximizing their yields. Yield monitoring is a tool to collect data and identify the yield variability in the field precisely. The interpretation of this data facilitates a farmer to take effective decisions in precision farming market. Yield monitors are combinations of various components that include temperature sensors, moisture sensors, speed sensors, radiation sensors and a task cloud that controls the integration and interaction of these components.
Farming & Agriculture remains a largely untapped area from Pakistan’s startup industry point of view. This is quite a shocking fact seeing as Pakistan relies heavily on its agriculture industry. About 25% of Agriculture and Farming in Pakistan adds to 21% of our GDP. The whole industry employs 43%of or total labor force.
Wheat is the most widely grown crop in the world. Wheat (Triticum aestivum.) is one of the firstdomesticated food crops and has been the basic staple food of the major civilizations of Europe, West Asia and North Africa for last 8000 years. Approximately one sixth of the total arable land in the world is under wheat. It is most demanded food grain and its production leads all crops, including rice, maize and potatoes. The optimum growing temperature is about 25°C, with minimum and maximum growth temperatures of 3° to 4°C and 30° to 32°C, respectively. Wheat is adapted to a broad range of moisture conditions and can be grown in most locations where precipitation ranges from 250 to 1750 mm. Classification into spring or winter wheat is common and traditionally refers to the season during which the crop is grown. For winter wheat, heading is delayed until the plant experiences a period of cold winter temperatures (0° to 5°C), Spring wheat, as the name implies, is usually planted in the spring (can be sown in autumn in countries like Pakistan that experience mild winters) and matures during summer.
Wheat, as a human food is prized for its taste and as source of calories, protein, and certain
vitamins and minerals, is the world most important crop. In addition to its utilization for bread large quantities of wheat are utilized for unleavened bread such as “Chapatti” in Pakistan and India, for pastry products, and for semolina products. These uses, combined with its nutritive value and storage quality, have made wheat a staple food for more than one-third of the world's population.
In Pakistan, wheat being the main staple food cultivated on the largest acreages. Pakistan falls inten major wheat-producing countries of the world in terms of area under wheat cultivation, totalproduction and yield per hectare. Wheat is the essential diet of population as it constitutes 60% of the daily diet of common man in Pakistan and average per capita consumption is about 125 kgand occupies a central position in agricultural policies of the government. Wheat contributes 10.1 percent to the value added in agriculture and 2.2 percent to
GDP. Area under wheat has increased to 8.693 million hectares in 2012-13, from 8.650millionhectares showing an increase of 0.5 percent over last year's area. The production stood at 24.3
million tones during 2012-13, against the target of 25.5 milrinones which is 5.1
percent decrease from target while a 3.2 percent increase over the last year production of 23.5
million tones has been witnessed. The yield per hectare in 2012-13 stood at 2797 (Kg/ha) posted
a positive growth of 2.7percent as compared to negative 4.2 percent growth last year.
Wheat production in the country has increased from 3.35 to 25 million tonnes (617%) during
1948 to 2011 whereas increase in the area was from 3.9 to 8.9 million hectare during this
period(129%). Grain yield (Kg ha-1) has been increased from 848 (1948) to 2797 (2013) with an
increase of 317 percent.
Over the past three decades, increased agricultural productivity occurred largely due to the deployment of high-yielding cultivars and increased fertilizer use. With the introduction of semi dwarf wheat cultivars, wheat productivity has been increased in all the major cropping systems representing the diverse and varying agro-ecological conditions. Improved semi-dwarf wheat cultivars available in Pakistan have genetic yield potential of 7-8 t/ ha whereas our national
average yields are about 2.8 t/ha. Many experiment stations and on-farm
demonstrations have repeatedly shown high yield potential of the varieties. National average
yield in irrigated and rainfed area is 3.5 and 1.5 t/ha, respectively. The progressive farmers of
irrigated area are harvesting 5.5 to 7 tons wheat grain per hectare.
There is around 60% yield gap in wheat, which needs to be narrowed. Because of lower yields,
wheat production in the country, however, has been well below potential and variable. The major
reasons for low productivity and instability includes: delayed harvesting of kharif crops like
cotton, sugarcane and rice, and consequent late planting of wheat, non availability of inputs like
seed, inefficient fertilizer use, weed infestation, shortage of irrigation water, terminal heat,
drought in rainfed, soil degradation and weak extension services system
FACTORS EFFECTING Crop
Soil fertility is continuously depleting due to mining of the essential plant
nutrients from the soils under intensive cultivation and imbalanced use of
fertilizers. During 2011-12, the off take of nitrogen (N) decreased by 0.1%, while
the use of phosphate (P) and potash (K) declined by 19% and 31.3%, respectively
compared with 2010-11. With the increase in wheat support price for 2012-13
wheat crop, phosphorus and nitrogen application has witnessed an increase of
25% and 7% in comparison with 2011-12 season. Although farmers have
awareness regarding fertilizer benefits but balance fertilizer application is a dream. At present N P ratio is 4:1for wheat crop that should be at least 1.5:1.
In Pakistan, from 1982 to 2002, the irrigated area has increased from 15.48 to 18.22 million hectares. The irrigated area under wheat has also increased from 5.962 in 1985-86 to 7.00 million hectare in 2002-03. The major part of irrigation water is not utilized by the crops and the combined effect of leakage, wastage and seepage amounts to 40% loss. Wheat crop need water for the whole growth period, but their are some stages which are more vulnerable to water shortage and any water shortage during this period may result in serious yield loses. The
shortage of irrigation water at crown root initiation, booting and early grain fill period results in significant yield losses."