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Connected Farming: An IoT enabled Solution for Uganda's Agriculture

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 Connected Farming: An IoT enabled Solution for Uganda’s Agriculture
SUNIL M R, Faculty of Information and Communications Technology,

ISBAT University, Kampala, Uganda

ABSTRACT
Agriculture is one of the concerns that never ends up being addressed. Since agriculture is one of the rural
population's main livelihood sources. Therefore, it is very important to build the agricultural data-based
Internet of things. Internet-of-Things (IoT) is a revolutionary technology that represents the future of
communication & computing. Despite people's perception of the agricultural cycle, the fact is that today's
agriculture industry needs to be more data-centric, reliable, efficient and smarter than ever before. The rapid
advancement of Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled technology has transformed practically every industry
including “smart agriculture” which has transformed the market from statistical to quantitative approach.
Such radical changes lift the conventional methods of agriculture and introduce new prospects amid a
number of challenges. IoT helps in better crop management, better resource management, cost efficient
agriculture, improved quality and quantity , crop monitoring and field monitoring etc. This paper outlines
the potential of sensors and IoT in agriculture, as well as the challenges to be faced when this technology
is implemented into conventional farming practices. This paper also analyzes in detail about the IoT devices
and communication techniques associated with wireless sensors used in agricultural applications. The
sensors are identified for specific agricultural applications, such as soil preparation, crop status, irrigation,
insect detection and pest detection. How this technology can assist farmers throughout the crop processes,
from sowing to harvesting, packaging and transport is also illustrated. Furthermore, this article discusses
the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for field surveillance and other beneficial uses such as crop yield
optimization.
INDEX TERMS: Internet-of-Things (IoTs), Connected Farming, Smart agriculture, Modern agriculture
practices, Agriculture robots, Automation, Sensor technology.
I. INTRODUCTION
Farming/Agriculture is the essential source of livelihood of people in Uganda. Food costs are continuously
increasing since crop rate is declined. There are number of factors which are responsible for this, it may be
due to water waste, low soil fertility, fertilizer abuse, climate change or crop diseases, etc. Critical
characteristics, like soil type, nutrient presence, flow of irrigation, pest resistance, etc., define its
appropriateness and capability for a particular crop. In most of situations, the differentiations of
characteristics can exist inside a single farm field, even if the same crop is being cultivated in entire farm;
thus, site-specific analyses are required for ideal yield generation. Further, including the dimension of time,
specific crops within the same field rotate season-to-season and biologically reach different stages of their
cycle inside a year in regions where locational and temporal differences result in particular growth
requirements to optimize the crop generation. To respond to these requests with a variety of issues, farmers
require modern technology-based strategies to deliver more from less land and with less hands. Considering
the conventional farming procedures, farmers have to visit the agriculture field as often as possible
throughout the crop lifespan to have a better idea of crop conditions.
For this, the requirement of connected farming emerges, as 70% of cultivating time is went through
observing and understanding the crop status rather than doing genuine fieldwork [1]. Considering the
immensity of the agriculture industry, it incredibly demands innovative and exact solutions with the aim of
sustainability whereas clearing out the least natural effect. Recent sensing and communication
advancements give a true remote “eye within the field” ability in which farmers can observe happenings
within the field without being within the field. Remote sensors are encouraging the monitoring of crops
constantly with higher accuracy and can, most importantly, identify early stages of undesirable state. This
is the reason why modern farming includes the utilization of smart tools and kits, from sowing to crop
harvesting and indeed amid storage and transportation. Timely reporting employing a range of sensors
makes the whole operation not only smart but also cost-effective due to its accurate monitoring capabilities.
A variety of smart tractors, harvesters, automated weeders, UAVs, and satellites currently benefit
agriculture equipment. Sensors can be integrated and start collecting information in a short time, which is
at that point accessible online for further analysis nearly immediately. Sensor innovation offers crop and
site-specific farming because it supports precise data collection of each location. Recently, the Internet-of-
Things (IoT) is starting to impact a wide array of sectors and industries, extending from manufacturing,
health, communications, and energy to the agriculture industry, to decrease inefficiencies and improve the
performance over all markets [2]-[6].
If looking closely, one feels that the current applications are only scratching the surface in which the genuine
impact of IoT and its benefits are not however seen. Still, considering this progress, particularly within the
near past, we will anticipate that IoT technologies are going to play a vital role in different applications of
the agriculture segment. This is often since of the capabilities offered by IoT, including the essential
communication infrastructure (utilized to connect the smart objects - from sensors, vehicles, to user mobile
devices - utilizing the Internet) and range of services, such as local or remote information acquisition, cloud-
based intelligent information analysis, and decision making, user interfacing, and agriculture operation
automation. Such capabilities can revolutionize the agriculture industry which likely one of the most
inefficient sectors of our economic value chain today. To summarize this discussion, figure 1 gives the main
drivers of this innovation.

FIGURE 1: Key Drivers of Technology in Agriculture

There are reasonable efforts that highlight the role of the IoT within the farming industry, but most of the
published work focuses only on applications [7], [8], [9]. Most of the existing articles either give no
knowledge or appear constrained center on the different IoT-based architectures, models, advanced
strategies and other issues considering the most recent facts and figures.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II gives a profound outline of major applications of
IoT in agriculture and what able to accomplish by utilizing these innovations. Section III gives
understanding concerning the role of IoT in modern agriculture practices, like vertical farming (VF),
hydroponics, and phenotyping, to manage the issues of the increased urban population. Section IV
highlights different technologies and components, like sensors, robots, tractors, and communication
technologies, being utilized to implement IoT in this industry. Accepting the worth of UAVs in agriculture,
Segment V caters application accomplishments that are not possible even after utilizing other most recent
advancements. Finally, Section VI concludes this article.
II. IoT APPLICATIONS IN AGRICULTURE
By implementing the most recent sensing and IoT innovations in farming practices, each aspect of
conventional farming strategies can be fundamentally changed. Right now, consistent integration of remote
sensors and the IoT in smart farming can raise agriculture to levels which were already unimaginable. By
taking after the practices of connected farming, IoT can offer assistance to improve the solutions of
numerous conventional cultivating issues, like drought response, yield optimization, land suitability,
irrigation, and pest control. Figure 2 lists a hierarchy of major applications, services, and remote sensors
being utilized for smart agriculture applications. Whereas, major instances in which the technological
advancements are making a difference at different stages to improve overall effectiveness are discussed
below.

FIGURE 2: Hierarchy of possible Applications, Services and Sensors for Connected Farming
A. SOIL INSPECTION AND MAPPING
Soil is the “Stomach” of plants, and its inspection is the primary step of examination to get field-specific
data, which is then further utilized to form various critical decisions at distinctive stages. The main objective
of soil investigation is to decide the nutrient status of a field so that measures can be taken appropriately
when nutrient insufficiencies are identified. Comprehensive soil tests are prescribed on a yearly premise,
ideally in Spring; however, based on soil conditions and climate consents, it may be done in Fall or Winter
[10]. The factors that are critical to analyzing the soil nutrient levels include soil type, crop history, fertilizer
usage, irrigation level, topography, etc. These factors give knowledge concerning the chemical, physical,
and biological statuses of soil to recognize the limiting factors such that the crops can be managed
appropriately. Soil mapping opens the entryway to sowing a variety of crops in a particular field to better
match soil properties in like manners, like seed suitability, time to sow, and indeed the planting depth, as a
few are deep-rooted and others less. Moreover, developing different crops together could also lead to
smarter use of agriculture, simply making the best utilization of resources.
As of now, manufacturers are providing a wide range of toolkits and sensors that can help farmers to track
the soil quality and, based on this information, recommend remedies to avoid its degradation. These systems
allow for the monitoring of soil properties, such as surface, water-holding capacity, and absorption rate,
which eventually offer assistance to minimize erosion, densification, salinization, acidification, and
contamination (by reducing unwanted use of fertilizer).
B. IRRIGATION
Different controlled irrigation strategies, like drip irrigation and sprinkler water system, are being promoted
to handle the water wastage issues, which were moreover found in conventional strategies like flood
irrigation and furrow irrigation. Both the crop quality and quantity are gravely influenced when confronting
water deficiency, as unpredictable irrigation, indeed overabundance leads to diminished soil nutrients and
provokes diverse microbial diseases. It isn't a straightforward task to precisely assess the water demand of
crops, where factors like crop type, irrigation strategy, soil type, precipitation, crop needs, and soil moisture
maintenance are included. Considering this truth, precise soil and air moisture control system using the
remote sensors not only makes an ideal utilize of water but also leads to better crop health.
The current situation of irrigation strategies is anticipated to be changed by embracing emerging IoT
innovations. A noteworthy increment in crop efficiency is anticipated with the utilization of IoT based
strategies, such as crop water stress index (CWSI)-based irrigation management [7], [11]. For this,
achieving crop canopy at diverse periods and air temperature is required for the calculation of CWSI. A
remote sensors based monitoring framework where all the field sensors are associated to gather the specified
measurements, further transmit to preparing center where comparing intelligent software applications are
utilized to analyze the farm data. Not only this but data from other sources including climate information
and satellite imaging is connected to CWSI models for water need assessment, and finally, the specific
irrigation index value is delivered for each farm site. A prominent illustration is VRI (Variable Rate
Irrigation) optimization by CropMetrics [12], which works agreeing to topography or soil variability,
eventually improves the water use effectiveness.
C. FERTILIZER
A fertilizer is a natural or chemical substance that can give vital nutrients for the development and fertility
of crops. Crops primarily require three key macronutrients: nitrogen (N) for leaf development; phosphorus
(P) for root, flowers, and fruit development; potassium (K) for stem development and water movement
[13]. Any sort of nutrients insufficiency or applying them improperly can be seriously harmful to the plant
health. Critically, excessive utilize of fertilizer not only results in financial losses but also makes harmful
impacts to the soil and environment by depleting the soil quality, poisoning groundwater, and contributing
to global climate changes.
Modern IoT-based fertilizing approaches offer help to assess the spatial patterns of nutrients requirements
with higher accuracy and minimal labor requirements [14], [15]. For example, the Normalized Difference
Vegetation Index (NDVI) uses aerial/satellite pictures to screen crop nutrient status [16], [17]. Basically,
NDVI is based on the reflection of visible and near-infrared light from vegetation and is utilized to estimate
the crop wellbeing, vegetation vigor, and density, further contributing to evaluating the soil nutrient level.
Such exact execution can altogether improve the fertilizer effectiveness, at the same time diminishing the
side effects to the environment.
D. CROP DISEASE AND PEST MANAGEMENT
Recent IoT based smart devices, such as remote sensors, robots, and UAVs are allowing the farmers to cut
pesticide uses significantly by spotting crop adversaries. Compared to conventional calendar or prescription
based pest control strategies, modern IoT-based pest monitoring gives real-time management, modeling,
disease forecasting, subsequently demonstrating more effective [18], [19].
By and large, the reliability of crop disease monitoring and pest monitoring depends on three viewpoints:
sensing, evaluating, and treatment. The advanced disease and pest recognition approaches are based on
image processing in which raw images are procured all through the crop region using field sensors, UAVs,
or remote sensing satellites. Usually, remote sensing imagery covers large regions and, consequently, offers
higher effectiveness at a lower cost. On the other hand, field sensors can back more capacities in collecting
information, like environment sampling, plant health, and pest situations, in every corner all through the
crop cycle. For example, IoT-based automated traps [20], [21] can capture, count, and even characterize
insect types, further uploading information to the Cloud for detailed examination, which isn't possible
through remote sensing.
Approaches like vehicle precise spray and automatic VRT chemigation [22], commonly utilized beneath
smart fertilization, can also be utilized for disease treatment and other pesticide applications. Also, the
advancement of robotic technology offers new solutions. When preparing an agricultural robot with
multispectral sensing devices and spraying nozzles, it can find and deal with pest problems more absolutely
beneath the control of a remote IoT disease management framework.
E. YIELD MONITORING, FORECASTING, AND HARVESTING
Yield monitoring is the mechanism used to analyze different aspects corresponding to farming yield, like
grain mass stream, moisture content, and harvested grain quantity. It makes a difference to precisely
evaluate by recording the crop yield and moisture level to estimate, how well the crop performed and what
to do another. Yield monitoring is considered a fundamental part of precision farming not only at the time
of harvest but indeed before that, as monitoring the yield quality plays a vital part.
Crop forecasting is an art to anticipate the yield and production (tons/ha) before the harvest takes place.
This forecasting makes a difference in the farmer for near-future planning and decision making. Besides,
analyzing the yield quality and its development is another critical factor that enables the determination of
the right time for harvesting. Predicting the right harvesting time not only makes a difference to maximize
the crop quality and production but also allows adjusting the management technique.
III. MODERN AGRICULTURAL PRACTICES
Sensors and IoT-based advancements are making a difference to improve ordinary agriculture processes to
upgrade yield production without, or with least, impact on its originality. For this reason, modern advanced
and more controlled environments are anticipated to tackle the above-mentioned issues. The significance
and inclusion of innovations are more critical, as we are moving towards more cultured and urban farming.
In reality, it would not be erroneous for one to say that the success of these advanced practices is in question
without using sensor-based technologies.
A. Greenhouse Farming
Greenhouse farming is considered the oldest strategy of smart farming. Crops developed indoors are
exceptionally less influenced by the environment; most importantly, they are not constrained to getting light
only amid the daytime. As a result, the crops that traditionally could only be developed under suitable
conditions or in certain parts of the world are now being developed anytime and anyplace. This was the
actual time in which sensors and communication devices began to bolster different agriculture applications
genuinely.
Precise monitoring of environmental parameters is the most primary task in present-day greenhouses, where
a few estimation points of different parameters are required to control and guarantee the local climate. In
[23], an IoT-based model is proposed to screen the greenhouses where MicaZ nodes are utilized to measure
the interior parameters like humidity, temperature, light, and pressure.
B. Vertical Farming
Vertical Farming within the shape of urban farming offers an opportunity to stack the plants in a more
controlled environment resulting in, most vitally, a significant reduction in resource utilization. By
following this strategy, we can increase the production multiple times, as only a fraction of the ground
surface is required (depending on the number of stacks) as compared to conventional farming practices.
Not only for ground surface, but this framework is also profoundly effective in terms of other resources, as
well. Beneath this farming strategy, many parameters are vital, but CO2 measurements are most critical;
thus, non-dispersive infrared (NDIR) CO2 sensors play a critical role to track and control the conditions in
vertical farms.
C. Hydroponic
To improve the benefits of greenhouse cultivation, farming specialists moved forward another step and
provided the thought of hydroponic, a subset of hydroculture in which plants are developed without soil.
Hydroponic is based on an irrigation framework in which balanced nutrients are dissolved in water and
crop roots remain in that solution; in a few cases, roots can be supported by a medium like a perlite or
gravel. When combining hydroponics with VF, a farm of 100 sq. meters can create the crop comparable to
1 acre of the conventional farm, most importantly up to 95% less water and fertilizer utilization and without
pesticides/herbicides [24].
D. Phenotyping
The previously discussed smart strategies look more promising for the future of farming, as they are already
being used to create distinctive crop products beneath precise environments. Other than these, some
advanced methods are under experiment to further improve the crop capabilities by controlling their
limitations with the help of advanced sensing and communication technologies. Among these strategies,
the more prominent is phenotyping, which is based on emerging crop engineering, which joins plant
genomics with its ecophysiology and agronomy, as appears in Figure 3. The progress in molecular and
genetic tools for different crop breeding was significant within the last decade. In any case, a quantitative
examination of the crop behavior, e.g. grain weight, pathogen resistance, etc., was constrained due to the
need for efficient techniques and innovations that we can now enjoy.

FIGURE 3: The Process of Phenotyping

IV. MAJOR EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGIES
Most of the tasks in modern, large-scale farming are being done by heavy and urban equipment, such as
tractors, harvesters, and other robots which are completely or in part backed by remote sensing and other
communication technologies. Agriculture has transformed during the last few decades from small/medium
farming operations to highly industrialized and commercial cultivating. The key technologies and
equipment that are as of now accessible for this reason are discussed in the following.
A. WIRELESS SENSORS
Sensors are the most crucial and play a vital role when it comes to collecting the crop conditions and other
data. Remote sensors are being utilized standalone wherever required, further integrated with nearly every
portion of advanced agricultural tools and heavy machinery, depending on application necessities.
1) ACOUSTIC SENSORS: Acoustic sensors offer a miscellaneous appliance in farm management,
including soil cultivation, weeding, fruit harvesting, etc.; the main benefit of this technology is its low
cost solutions with fast response, especially when considering portable equipment. Acoustic sensors
are commonly used for pest monitoring and detection and classifying the seed varieties according to
their sound absorption spectra.
2) FIELD-PROGRAMMABLE GATE ARRAY (FPGA)-BASED SENSORS: FPGA based sensors are
starting to be used in agriculture recently due to their flexibility of reconfiguration. The major options
where these can be employed include measuring real-time plant transpiration, irrigation, and humidity.
3) OPTICAL SENSORS: These sensors use light reflectance phenomena and help to measure soil organic
substances, soil moisture and color, presence of minerals and their composition, clay content, etc. These
sensors test the soil's ability to reflect light based on different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum.
The changes occurred in wave reflections help to indicate the changes in soil density and other
parameters.
4) ULTRASONIC RANGING SENSORS: Sensors of this category are considered a good choice being
low cost, potential to operate in a variety of applications, and ease of use and adjustability, such as the
sampling rate. Common uses are tank monitoring, spray distance measurement (e.g., boom height and
width control in order to perform uniform spray coverage, object detection, and collision avoidance),
and monitoring crop canopy
5) OPTOELECTRONIC SENSORS: Optoelectronic sensors can differentiate plant type; hence, they
help to detect weeds, herbicides, and other unwanted plants, especially in wide-row crops. When
combining, an optoelectronic sensor and location information, it can map the weed distribution and
resolution. Optoelectronic sensors are also capable of differentiating between vegetation and soil from
their reflection spectra.
6) AIRFLOW SENSORS: These sensors are capable of measuring soil air permeability and percentage
of moisture and identifying soil structure to distinguish different types of soils. Measurements can be
made at singular locations or dynamically while in motion, e.g., can be used on a fixed position or in
mobile mode. The desired output is the pressure required to push a predetermined amount of air into
the ground at a prescribed depth.
7) ELECTROCHEMICAL SENSORS: These are mostly used to assess the significant soil
characteristics to analyze the soil nutrient levels, such as pH. The standard chemical soil analysis, which
are mostly expensive and time consuming, can be easily substituted with these sensors.
8) MECHANICAL SENSORS: Mechanical sensors assess the soil mechanical resistance (compaction)
to indicate the variable level of compaction. The mechanical sensors enter or cut through the soil and
record the force assessed by strain gauges or load cells.
9) REMOTE SENSING SENSORS: Sensors belong to this category are used to capture and store the
geographic information, further analyze, manipulate, manage and present all types of spatial or
geographical data. these sensors also found significant use in agriculture applications including crop
assessment, forecasting yield dates, yield modelling and forecasting, identification of plants and pests,
land cover and degradation mapping etc.
10) OTHER SENSORS: This include Mass-flow Sensors, LIDAR Sensors, Telematics Sensors, Electro-
Magnetic Sensors etc.
B. IOT BASED TRACTORS
With technological advancements, most of the vendors are offering tractors with automated-driving and
also with Cloud-computing capabilities. This technology isn't new, as self-driving tractors have been within
the market even before semi-autonomous cars. One of the main benefit of self-driving tractors is their
capacity to avoid returning to the same area or row by lessening the overlap even less than an inch. In
addition, they can make exceptionally exact turns without a driver's physical presence. This facility offers
better accuracy with reduced errors, particularly when spraying pesticide or targeting weeds; those are
mostly unavoidable when a human controls the machinery.
C. HARVESTING ROBOTS
In order to automate the harvesting process and make it more accurate, the role of robots has been increasing
over the recent years. Programmed harvesting of fruits requires deep examination of modern sensors that
are able of collecting accurate and unambiguous data of that specific crop and fruit. The task of detecting
the correct target in natural scenes isn't simple since most of the fruits are blocked somewhat - sometimes
indeed completely - under the leaves and branches or are overlapped with other fruits [25].
D. COMMUNICATION IN AGRICULTURE
Communication and reporting the data on a timely basis are considered the backbone of connected farming.
The objective cannot be accomplished unless a firm, dependable, and secure connection among various
participating objects is provided. Depending on availability, scalability and application requirements,
different communication modes and technologies are being utilized for this reason, most common are
discussed here.
1) LORA: LoRa wireless technology is a long-range, low-power platform used extensively in IoT
applications. Being low in power consumption, it offers LPWAN connectivity between the wireless
sensors and the Cloud. It has proved itself much more effective and reliable than Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.
especially in restaurants or kitchen environments. Sensors based on LoRa can be installed in smaller
devices for reliable monitoring. Most importantly, LoRa signals can penetrate thick and insulated
objects, even buildings, and can, hence, cover a larger network area. Overall, LoRa-based networks
perform higher in terms of lifespan and, at the same time, pose reduced maintenance and upkeep burden
[26].
2) ZIGBEE: Zigbee is primarily designed for a wide range of applications especially to replace existing
non-standard technologies. Depending on the application requirements, the devices based on this
protocol can be one of three types including Coordinator, Router and End User. Further, three different
topologies are supported by Zigbee networks named, Start, Cluster Tree and Mesh [27]. Based on these
characteristics, and further considering the agriculture application requirements, Zigbee can play vital
role especially targeting the greenhouse environment where usually short range communications are
required.
3) BLUETOOTH: Bluetooth is a wireless communication standard that connects small-head devices
together over shorter distances usually cooperating in a close proximity. Due to its advantages of low
power requirements, easy to use and low cost, this technology is being utilized in many smart farming
 applications. Further, Bluetooth making advancements in many IoT systems with the release of
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or commonly known as Bluetooth Smart.
4) CELLULAR COMMUNICATION: Cellular communication modes from 2G to 4G can be suitable,
depending on the purpose and bandwidth requirement; however, the reliability, and even availability, of
a cellular network in rural areas is a major concern. To tackle this, data transmission via satellite is
another option, but, here, the cost of this communication mode is very high, which makes it not suitable
for small- and medium-sized farms. The choice of communication mode also depends on application
requirements, such as some farms required sensors that can operate with low data rate but need to work
for long periods hence demand long battery life.
Figure 4 gives an idea that how end-to-end communication possibilities can be divided in various layers to
interact with each other in order to provide the services for connected farming.

FIGURE 4: End-to-End Communication for Connected Farming

E. CLOUD COMPUTING
Connected farming is showing its potentiality and benefits by progressing farming processes through
better data-driven decision making. However, to continue this success, connected farming not only
requires better technology and tools to process data effectively but also at a reasonable cost such that
the received data can be used to form field choices effectively. For this reason, farmers can use Cloud
services to get to data from predictive analysis institutes so that they can select the right product
available according to their specific requirements. Cloud computing offers an edge to farmers to utilize
knowledge-based repositories that contain a treasure of data and encounters related to farming practices
as well as on hardware options available within the market with the essential details.
V. UAVs IN AGRICULTURE
Recently, the IoT has made exceptional progress in numerous businesses, including farming divisions
like poultry, fishing, etc. but when we talk about agriculture, the communication facilities like base
stations or Wi-Fi are very constrained, which prevents the growth of the IoT in this segment. The
 information procured through the remote sensors cannot be transmitted in the absence of dependable
communication infrastructure.
For such Scenarios, UAVs offer an alternative, as they visit and communicate with the remote sensors
spread over large areas in order to gather information for further processing and investigation. Besides,
UAVs, better known as drones, fitted with high-resolution cameras and sensors, can be flown over
thousands of hectares of farms. The role of surveillance in all agriculture applications is highly critical,
particularly in forestry and crop monitoring due to the need to cover large regions [28]. In this manner,
a fast, low cost, real-time, and large-scale surveillance supported with an accurate data acquisition and
transmission office is significant for farm production.
Right now, agriculture is being considered one of the most favorable area where UAVs can offer
solutions to resolve many overwhelming and long-lasting issues. A few of key areas in which UAVs
are already playing key roles to help farmers all through the crop lifespan are as follows:

• SOIL AND FIELD ANALYSIS

• PLANTING
• CROP MONITORING
• IRRIGATION
• PLANT COUNTING AND GAP DETECTION
• PESTICIDES SPRAYING
• HEALTH ASSESSMENT
• DETECTION/RECOGNITION OF PLANT SPECIES etc.

VI. CONCLUSION
Farming can be made more effective & precise with the adoption of IoT technology. The focus on more
intelligent, better, and more effective farming techniques is required in order to meet the growing food
demand of the increasing world population. To attain this, we need to develop an ideal IoT architecture
for farming in order to improve quality and quantity of production, save resources like water and
electricity, economically efficient crop that cost less and make more profit as in nation like Uganda,
where farmers play a major role in GDP so this way the overall GDP can too be improved. This article
considered all these aspects and highlighted the role of different technologies, particularly IoT, in order
to make the farming smarter and more effective to meet future demands. For this purpose, remote
sensors, UAVs, Cloud-computing, communication technologies are discussed thoroughly. Based on all
this, it can be concluded that effective utilization of farm land is important to maximize crop production.
However, to deal with each inch accordingly, the use of sustainable IoT-based sensors and
communication technologies isn't optional - it is essential.
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