The Shift to Smart Agriculture
Farmers used to feel frustrated by multiple factors related to the growth of their crops. The most common issues included:
- Tremendous expenses that went into cultivating healthy crops.
- Uncertain outcomes of farmers’ effort and unpredictable losses.
- The lack of optimal supplies of water needed for plants to thrive.
- Inability to understand why some plants die while others survive in identical conditions.
When satellites entered the picture, they changed everything: now, you can all see what your sprinkler is doing in real time. Most importantly, you can understand how efficient its work is. People who set up satellite crop monitoring for irrigation management get a chance to observe their fields remotely, receive insights into the state of specific plants, and make smart decisions on this basis. This is a sure way to guarantee sustainability and overcome resource pressure.
Do all the farmers readily embrace the opportunities brought to them by satellites? No, as many of them continue to believe that such tools are inaccessible, expensive, or difficult to grasp. In reality, now that the shift to smart agriculture platforms has taken place, it will only grow more pronounced. That’s why you need to learn what key technologies you can use to understand your crops’ water needs better.
Key Technologies for Smart Irrigation
Multiple irrigation tools function on the basis of satellite insights. All information is sent to a central digital agriculture platform, and you can rely on it to make adjustments to your watering patterns and schedules. Let’s take a look at the most effective technologies that transformed water management in agriculture.
Satellite Remote Sensing and Soil Moisture Monitoring
With the help of their radars and optical sensors, satellites allow monitoring soil moisture across endless fields and territories. This gives farmers insights into how much water a specific piece of soil contains at the moment and how they should adjust their irrigation schedules or levels. Systems like NASA’s SMAP, ESA’s Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2, and Copernicus Global Land Service can deliver the following benefits:
- Detecting dry zones in advance and allowing farmers to take action before they suffer losses.
- Making, adjusting, or supporting irrigation scheduling decisions of specific users.
- Reducing overwatering and waterlogging by measuring soil moisture every couple of days.
- Providing access to free soil moisture datasets for precision irrigation applications.
For instance, the Morning Star company, a known global tomato processor, decided to use precision agritech in the form of EOSDA Crop Monitoring, a satellite-based platform. They wanted to solve the problem of crop overwatering, and after comparing data from drones, planes, and satellites, it became clear that the latter deliver more accurate actionable insights. Farmers no longer have to rely on weather reports and heat levels to decide when and how to water their plants: they can see which of them require moisture.
Vegetation and Water Indices and Crop Health Detection
Plants that experience water-related stress change color, and this is a factor that satellites can detect. Various vegetation and water indices help quantify this finding, so by using them, you can easily identify zones that require irrigation adjustments.
Grapes, for instance, depend on correct irrigation to a huge extent. As the experiment performed by Primo Principio showed, a smart farm platform with vegetation and water indices helps apply irrigation with heightened precision. It’s a great opportunity to detect drought stress, set up targeted watering, and improve your overall yields.
Predictive Modeling and AI Integration
AI helps turn raw data from satellites into predictive insights. This is what you can learn with its help:
- How much water your crops will need in the coming days or weeks.
- How to automate your irrigation decisions to save your time and resources.
- Stress levels your crops are currently experiencing and the reasons for it.
- How to optimize water allocation across different fields and improve their long-term sustainability.
As statistics show, the sales of global navigation satellite system devices in the agriculture sector will reach 5.5 billion dollars by 2033. Smart farming tools are growing more popular by the year, and while they still need some improvements, their efficiency cannot be overestimated.
Using Satellites for Smarter Irrigation Decisions
The world of agriculture has changed dramatically, there is no question here. Using a crop monitoring platform based on satellite data is proven to deliver better results at lower costs. You don’t have to turn on your sprinklers when it’s hot and hope for the best any longer: rely on smart technologies, and you’ll be able to establish what each specific plant needs for survival.
