Sensor Technology in Agriculture: Industry Overview, COVID-19 Impact Analysis, Types of Agriculture Sensors, Post COVID-19 Scenario, and Recent News

Overview:

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is causing widespread concern and economic hardship for consumers, businesses, and communities across the globe. Situation is changing quickly with widespread impacts. Ongoing spread of the COVID-19 has become one of the biggest threats to the global economy and is causing widespread concern and economic hardship for consumers, businesses, and communities across the globe. The “New Normal” that includes social distance and working from home has created challenges with daily activities, regular work, needs, and supplies causing delayed initiatives and missed opportunities. COVID-19 has caused the overall semiconductor industry to mobilize quickly and to make short-term decisions with long-term implications. Growth of sensor technology in the agriculture industry before COVID-19 was expected to have a gradual increase, owing to various contributing factors such as availability of novel products and rise in awareness toward automation in farming.

Emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has caused an irrevocable loss across the world, in terms of mankind as well as economic. It has severely affected different sectors including agriculture, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and tourism. The agriculture sector witnessed a marginal dip in 2020, wooing to COVID-19 pandemic as there was restriction on movement and lockdown across various countries. It resulted in shortage of equipment and disruptions of the supply chain. These restrictions forced the market players to explore new opportunities to interact with growers and farmers by leveraging technologies.

Furthermore, owing to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, there is a shortage of labor performing agricultural activities such as sowing and transplanting. Consequently, it has paved way for mechanization of the agriculture sector resulting in transformational changes for better yield. Hence, sensor technology in the agriculture market has gained momentum in the new normal. In addition, agriculture product industries are adversely affected by availability of daily basis labors. Subsequently, it is of utmost importance for an individual to develop resilient power to adapt to changing context and conserve existing food system during the prolonged lockdown and disruptions in food system.

Amidst the pandemic, there are a few prospects, which have gained traction in the crisis in the field of agriculture. There is a rise in popularity for concept and engagement of in-home garden and rooftop farming, owing to confinement of people at homes and lack of excess to nutritious vegetables. In addition, subsistence farming has gained significance during the pandemic. Moreover, the market is expected to recover from mid-2021 and will be struggling with a slow growth rate; however, it is anticipated to recover in the upcoming years, owing to surge in adoption of robotics technology in various organizations to help safeguard people from the global pandemic situation.

Impact of COVID-19 on several industries in context with sensor technology in agriculture market industry:

IoT device installations in agriculture farms around the globe are projected to witness a compound annual growth rate of 14%. COVID-19 is further expected to accelerate installation of IoT devices in agriculture farms across the globe to optimize irrigation scheduling with reduced labor requirements in the field. The number of connected agricultural devices is expected to witness a promising growth in medium to long term.

COVID-19 registered a surge in demand for service robots in the agriculture industry, which is lucrative for the market growth. In addition, to help increase productivity while lowering overall costs, the agriculture industry has been actively working to adopt different forms of robotic technologies. Farmers have already been using tractors and harvesters that are self-guided by GPS. Recently, there has been a rise in experimental use of autonomous systems that automate operations such as pruning, thinning, mowing, spraying, and weed removal. Sensor technology is also being utilized to manage pests and diseases that affect crops.

For instance, harvesting management is the most widely used application in agricultural robots, as it plays a vital role in understanding field variability and helps farmers in maximizing their yields. In addition, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are leveraging advanced 3D vision systems and flexible grippers are being used to automate the picking process. Countries such as the U.S., Germany, and Russia are adopting robotics technology in the agriculture sector to curb the infection among people. Robots are expected to perform manual task with full precision and in a minimal time, which is expected to fuel growth of the sensor technology in agriculture market in the coming years.

Types of Agriculture Sensors:

Various sensor technologies are now used in smart farming and precision farming and agriculture, which provide farming data and help farmers monitor and optimize crops and adapt to changing environmental factors.

• Location Sensors use signals from GPS satellites to determine latitude, longitude, and altitude. Three satellites minimum are required to triangulate a position.
• Optical Sensors use light to measure soil properties. These sensors measure different frequencies of light reflectance in near-infrared, mid-infrared, and polarized light spectrums. These can be placed on vehicles or aerial platforms such as drones or satellites.
• Electrochemical Sensors provide key information required in precision agriculture: pH and soil nutrient levels. Sensor electrodes work by detecting specific ions in the soil.
• Mechanical Sensors measure soil compaction or mechanical resistance. These sensors use a probe that penetrates soil and records resistive forces through use of load cells or strain gauges
• Dielectric Soil Moisture Sensors assess moisture levels by measuring dielectric constant, which is an electrical property that changes depending on amount of moisture present in the soil.
• Airflow Sensors measure soil air permeability. Measurements can be made at singular locations or dynamically while in motion. The desired output is the pressure required to push a predetermined amount of air into the ground at a prescribed depth.

Expectations from the Sensor Technology in Agriculture Market:

Sensor technology in agriculture market provides actionable data, which is further processed and used to optimize crop yield with minimum environmental effects. Expensive sensors, infrastructure, and processing equipment in the agriculture industry require sufficient capital investments to promote growth and adoption. Sensor technologies assist the agriculture industry in the below mentioned ways:

• Yield monitoring systems are placed on crop harvesting vehicles such as combines and corn harvesters. They provide a crop weight yield by time, distance, or GPS location measured and recorded to within 30cm.
• Yield mapping uses spatial coordinate data from GPS sensors mounted on harvesting equipment. Yield monitoring data is combined with coordinates to create yield maps.
• Variable rate fertilizer application tools use yield maps and optical surveys of plant health determined by coloration to control granular, liquid, and gaseous fertilizer materials.
• Weed mapping currently uses operator interpretation and input to generate maps by quickly marking a location with a GPS receiver and data logger. Weed occurrences can then be overlapped with yield maps, fertilizer maps, and spray maps.
• Variable spraying controllers turn herbicide spray booms on & off, and customize the amount of spray applied. Once weed locations are identified and mapped, volume and mix of the spray can be determined.
• Topography and boundaries can be recorded using high-precision GPS, which allows a very precise topographic representation to be made of any field. These precision maps are useful when interpreting yield maps and weed maps.
• Salinity mapping is done with a salinity meter on a sled towed across fields affected by salinity. Salinity mapping interprets emergent issues as well as change in salinity over time.
• Guidance system can accurately position a moving vehicle within 30cm or less using GPS. Guidance systems replace conventional equipment for spraying or seeding.

Precision agriculture has grown to meet increasing worldwide demand for food using technologies that make it simpler and cheaper to collect and apply data, adapt to changing environmental conditions, and use resources most efficiently. Although large farms have been the first to adopt these technologies, smaller farms are now able to benefit as well, using tools built into smart phones, relevant applications, and smaller-sized machinery.

Future developments in precision agriculture is expected to include increased autonomous farm vehicle use, as well as improved wireless data transmission and acquisition from smarter, smaller unmanned aerial and unmanned ground vehicles (UAVs and UGVs, respectively). In addition to monitoring crop and soil conditions, these smaller vehicles can also monitor status of farm equipment, allowing farmers to improve machine servicing and maintenance.

Sol-Chip technology uses solar power for sensors that are planted in a field and allows harvesting of solar energy to power sensors, replacing traditional batteries in agricultural equipment. Instead of a solar power package that gets added to the sensor to harvest and store power to keep the data flowing, Sol-Chips integrate solar harvesting and energy conversion into the manufacturing process. With chip’s energy source, part and parcel of the sensor’s components, farmers can basically plant their sensors and forget them, without the need to install external solar cells. Farmers also need to worry about replacing batteries or changing sensors when they run out of power.

According to the market trends, agricultural weather stations are self-contained sensors that are located at different spots through growing fields. These stations have a blend of sensors that are applicable for local crops and climates. Information such as air temperature, soil temperature at various depths, rainfall, leaf wetness, chlorophyll, wind speed, dew point temperature, wind direction, relative humidity, solar radiation, and atmospheric pressure are determined and recorded at programmed intervals. This data is transmitted wirelessly to a central data logger at programmed intervals. Moreover, as they are portable and reasonably priced, weather stations are appealing for farms of all sizes.

Post COVID-19 Scenario:

Although the COVID-19 outbreak negatively impacted the growth of the market, the industry is expected to recover by the third quarter of 2021. This is attributed to significant investments in advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and surge in need for safety and automation systems in organizations across the globe.

Farmers have already begun employing some high-tech farming techniques and technologies to improve efficiency of their work. For instance, sensors placed in fields allow farmers to obtain detailed maps of both topography and resources in the area as well as variables such as acidity and temperature of the soil. They can also access climate forecasts to predict weather patterns in the coming weeks. Farmers can use their smartphones to remotely monitor their equipment, crops, and livestock, as well as obtain stats on their livestock feeding and produce. They can even use this technology to run statistical predictions for their crops and livestock.

The COVID-19 crisis is expected to accelerate automation and adoption of Industry 4.0 technologies. Remote manufacturing, diagnostics, and maintenance can all become permanent features. If that occurs, semiconductor companies might become smart workspaces, with technologies that facilitate remote work for most workers. Companies are also expected to adopt and encourage a hybrid model in their manufacturing processes, in which a certain number of employees work remotely and the rest remain on site. Efficiencies gained through such changes, as well as their start-up costs, could influence future semiconductor revenues.

Recent News in the sensor technology in agriculture industry during the pandemic:

Use of smart sensors, software, and artificial intelligence is expected to transform the agricultural industry. Combinational sensors and sensor fusion hardware are anticipated to produce required plant data to increase crop production and adopt disease-free high yield crop varieties to keep pace with increasing demand for food. Rise of block chain technology is making its way to IoT and could be important in the farming sector, owing to its ability to provide companies with important data on crops. Farmers can use sensors to gather data about crops, which is written onto block chain and includes identifying factors as well as salt and sugar content and pH levels.

IoT is set to push the future of farming to the next level. Smart agriculture is already becoming more common among farmers, and high-tech farming is quickly becoming the standard practice due to the advent of agricultural drones and sensors. Hence, the market is anticipated to witness a considerable growth in the coming years.