Precision Agriculture has become vital for modern farming as the demand for food keeps on increasing together with an ever-growing global population. Heavy issues such as climate changes and limited water supplies jeopardize the quality and quantity of the cultivable land. To address such problems, farming has to be as controlled and accurate as possible, to avoid waste of natural resources while making the most of the available land.
The IoT can assist farmers in facing these necessities. Using sensors, data and network communication, it enables the analysis of the soil and of the plantations. Wastes can hence be reduced by avoiding unnecessary use of irrigation and/or pesticides and by optimizing the sowing and the use of fertilizers. In addition, the IoT makes possible to automate such operations.
Thanks to intelligent sensors, farmers can monitor soil moisture and temperature, rainfall and other parameters in real time, and be notified in case values vary significantly. All this information can be accessed remotely through any mobile device, saving time and effort.
Furthermore, remote fleet management enables a more accurate utilization and allocation of the assets while helping to predict failures and maintenance activities through data analysis.
Drones are a symbol of the progress of technology applied to Precision Agriculture because it is one of the sectors that use them the most. They are mostly adopted to monitor the health of crops, for irrigation, spraying, planting and to perform soil and field analysis. Drones enable integrated GIS mapping with the ability to collect multispectral, thermal and visual imagery for deeper insights.
Topcon Agriculture, in line with these technological trends, offers an IoT platform, TAP, a cloud-based agricultural ecosystem designed to provide real-time monitoring and data analysis for smart decision-making during every phase of the farming cycle.
TAP offers a modular solution with integrated third-party plug-in options and Cloudlynk connectivity devices for automatic data sync, remote support, fleet management, and seamless bi-directional file transfer, to create an ecosystem that adapts to the necessities of farmers, dealers and agronomists.
