JMJ Smart Farming
Introduction
Traditionally farming as a practice has been in the past and will continue in the future to be a manual and labor-intensive Industry. With technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), Big data & Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) touching almost all the listed industry sectors know. How can it not be the case for Agriculture and modern Internet and Communication Technology (ICT) to Interact? JMJ to the rescue.
JMJ started a small initiative of using a GPS System in tractors linked to the satellite for automated steering the crop map reducing errors and hence increased crop yield by reduction in wastage seeds, optimum utilization of fertilizers & manures, fuel and time made the way for a full-fledged industry.
It is estimated by the year 2050 to feed a population of about 9.5 billion inhabitants on earth the food production must increase by 70% considering limited agriculture land, scarcity of fresh water, and ever-changing climate conditions.
To address this challenge, efforts are in place at JMJ to improve the quality and quantity of agriculture products by making them 'Intelligent' and 'connected' through " smart farming" also referred to as "precision farming". Precision agriculture as an industry is poised to grow to 43 billion USD by the end of 2025.
Smart farming also known as 4.0 green revolution in the field of agriculture combining agriculture methodologies with technology - Sensors & Actuators, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Internet of Things (IoT), Robotics and Drones to achieve desired efficiencies of production with manage costs.
According to a survey, 80% of farmers in the US have already started using smart Farming Tools (SFT). These numbers are cognizant of the fact that SFTs are adding value to the farming ecosystem. As far as scale of operations is considered, JMJ's Smart Farming Tools and techniques can be applied to large scale distributed conventional farming and can be applied to focused small farming set of organic farms.
JMJ's Technology behind Smart Farming:
The JMJ structure of IoT is based on three layers: namely, the perception layer (sensing), the network layer (data transfer), and the application layer (data storage and manipulation).
LAYER 1: The perception layer
At the perception layer, we meet technologies such as WSM, RFID and recently, Near Field communications (NFC). RFID and NFC technologies play an important role in the agricultural domain. Typical user scenarios include products or livestock monitoring, supply chain and quality control tracking and lifecycle assessment of agriculture products.
LAYER 2: The network Layer
At the second layer of Iot, JMJ wireless sensor nodes interacting with physical objects and/or their environment, communicate with their neighboring nodes or a gateway, building networks through which the data are usually forwarded towards a remote infrastructure for storage, further analysis, processing and dissemination of the valuable knowledge that can be extracted. JMJ's communication protocols built over wireless standards, facilitate the device networking and bridge the gap between the internet-enabled gateways and the end-nodes. Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), LoRa / LoRaWAN, DASH7 and low-power WiFi have also appeared in our several deployments recently.
LAYER 3: The application layer
JMJs application layer is the third layer of the IoT. It is of high importance and in many ways, it is this that facilitates the realization of the IoT. The application layer faces several issues which must be resolved, such as the identification of the devices as unique entities.
Finally, for the sensed data to have a real value for the end-user or another system (I case of M2M (scenarios) they must be stored, analyzed, synthesized and presented in an understandable and intuitive manner. JMJ's Solution manages Big Data on one side effect of the continuous data flow coming from billions of geo-distributed devices and has three dimensions, namely volume, variety and velocity.
WSAN (Wireless Sensor-Actor Network) paradigm, i.e. distributed smart devices sensing and transferring data to a sink and /or driving one or more actuators, moves one step further towards interoperability of devices and objects. Other aspects of IoT include technologies that support the intercommunication amount devices and/or end users, as well as the platforms, the software, the hardware abstractions and the programming tools, over which developers and providers can build new applications and service.
Some of the Projects and Tools that JMJ were involved
Here we cite three real world examples, showcasing innovation in agriculture Iot:
1 MOOCALL: Wireless Calving Alert Sensor
2) Asparagus farming Sensor
3) Help for farmers to detect crop diseases
JMJ has vast experience with the following Tools and Techniques
RoboticsPlus - Fruit Picking Robots
Ecorobotix - Weed Zapping Robots
WaterBit - Smart Farming Irrigation Systems
Trace Genomics
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Sensor based resource and field mapping
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Remote equipment monitoring
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Remote crop monitoring
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Predictive analytics for crop and livestock
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Climate monitoring and forecasting
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Livestock tracking and geofencing
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Statistics on livestock feeding and produce
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Smart logistics and warehousing