Precision agriculture
Farming practices that use sensing, positioning and data analysis to apply water, fertilizer and crop protection where and when they are needed rather than uniformly.
Precision agriculture treats a field as a set of zones with different needs. Soil moisture probes, weather stations and satellite or drone imagery feed decisions about irrigation and inputs; GPS-guided machinery applies them at variable rates. IoT supplies the in-field sensing: battery-powered probes on LoRaWAN can run a whole season in places without mains power or cellular coverage.
The payoff is lower input costs and better yields, but the economics depend on the crop and the scale of the farm. Sensors in the field face dust, water and animals, and a reading is only useful if the farmer can act on it in time. Precision agriculture is one practice within the broader category of smart agriculture. The guide IoT in agriculture looks at what works in practice.
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