Development and Analysis of Smart Digi-farming

Robust Model for Production Optimization in

Agriculture
Harshkumar Prakashbhai Thakor Sailesh Iyer
Marwadi University, Rajkot, India Marwadi University, Rajkot, India
thakorharsh95@gmail.com drsaileshiyer@gmail.com

AbstractFarming is the term related to the agriculture x Lack of knowledge and skill: Literacy is also one of the
sector, which is considered one of the most vital sectors for the most important factors affecting in all the sectors.
endurance of mankind. Farmers are the ones who are in this Literacy rate in rural area is quite low and it gets even
livelihood of farming. Farming has not proved lucrative for the lower if we specifically talk about farmers of
small farmers as there are commission agents who earn much India.Lack of literacy results in Farmers being unaware
more than what the farmers do. This paper discusses various of changes occurring in the farming sector. IOT
models employed in Farming and proposes Smart Digi-farming
(internet of things) and many other technologies have
models which focus on farming using IoT (Internet of Things),
eased many of our lives.
Mobile application for the dissemination of farming and
commercial information and online sale of produce. Training on x Seeds/fertilizers/disease: To grow the good quality
the latest fertilizers, farming tools and digitization in agriculture crop the selection of seeds and appropriate knowledge
will attract youth towards farming and making India self- of fertilizers is required. If they don't select the good
sufficient in food grains. Happiness Index of farmers is measured quality seeds then the quality of crops get affected, and
and improved through this model which drives the farmers away if the appropriate fertilizers are not been sprinkled then
from suicidal tendencies and ushers in confidence, productivity
crops get infected. There are many types of disease that
and changes the lifestyle of the farmer.
can affect the crops. Timely and proper detection of the
Keywords—digi-farming; digitization in farming; smart affected can save the farmer from loss and helps in
claiming crop insurance.
farming; digital advertisements; happiness index,; fertilizers;
IoT; smart farming model.
I. INTRODUCTION
Most Indian farmers are still following the traditional
farming model (Figure 1) [1] which takes lots of time and
efforts of the farmer. There are many factors which are
affecting them in traditional farming. Some of the factors are
discussed in detail from the farmer perspective
x Weather: Farming mainly depends on weather
conditions. Farmers face great risk in growing crops, as
inadequate rainfall and water supply can destroy the
crop or lead to a decrease in farm produce.
x Price of crops: Farmers are faced with one more
uncertainty which is the price of the crop. The
government decides minimum prices known as MSP Fig. 1. Traditional farming model
(Minimum Support Price) of every crop and they make
changes in those prices on a daily basis. Commission x Loan/finance: Farming requires lots of initial
Agents are instrumental in fixing prices of crop and investment at an early stage. Farmer has to wait for a
normally exploit the farmers who are unaware of the long time to get the return of that investment and there
market conditions. Farmers can't hold their ready crops is no security available for that investment. They can
for a long time due to insufficient space and a shortage only get returns if the crop gets ready to sell. Majority
of money.so they agree to sell their crops on the of small farmers avail loan from banks/ private lending
offered price. companies or loan sharks at a very high rate of interest.
When they are not able to repay the loan, farmers resort
to suicide leaving behind their family. Government

c
978-93-80544-34-2$31.00 2019 IEEE 461
 statistics show that the number of Farmers committing
suicide is increasing every year.
x Commission agent/dealer: Once the crop is ready
farmer goes to dealer's who take their crops at the very
low price and sell the same crop at a higher price
resulting in improper valuation for the farmer. Efforts
put in by the farmer go waste as agents earn more than
the farmers who have toiled hard.
x Crop insurance: This facility can reduce the risk of
farmers because if their crops are insured then they can
claim for the loss during some condition. Many Banks
provide Crop Insurance schemes at a very low
premium but the farmer is unaware of such schemes
II. RELATED WORK
Israel is such a small nation still it's leading in the
agriculture sector. One of the major reason behind that is ICT
(Israel - Information Communication Technology) which is
providing solutions for many things but especially in
agriculture sector it's working as a bridge between farmers and
technology, they have set up many centers all around which
provide hands-on training to farmers about software and the
hardware with which they are going to deal, with the help of
that training farmers are getting familiar with technology and
internet. Farmers of Israel living a better life by adopting this
change which has ease their work and now they can sit back
and relaxed as many works are been automated or perform in
an easier way which saves their time and workload is also
reduced. This revolution is still not reached to the doorstep of
farmers.one of the reason behind that lack of proper education
which is missing in the rural area and especially in farmers
that are holding them back to adopt this technology. But with
the basic education as well one can easily learn certain
techniques and skill through which they can get used to with
internet and electronic gadgets as well. As taking motivation
from Israel ICT project, it can be implemented in India.
Malawade and Akulwar [7] discussed the role of IoT in
agriculture. Various applications of IoT in agriculture have
been deliberated like Soil Management, Crop Monitoring, Pest
Monitoring, etc. Aqeel and Shaikh [8] proposed a smart
agricultural prototype for irrigation control. They provided an
insight into smart agriculture and how technology can
transform the agricultural sector. Devi et al. [1] proposed a
model for building collaborative cloud management for
supporting IT education in rural India. IT Education and
infrastructure are the basic requirements for implementing
Smart Farming.
Sridhar and Syms [9] studied IoT devices and proposed an
intelligent security framework for IoT devices. Asymmetric
Cryptography has been proposed for securing the end to end
devices encryption. Yaganteeswarudu and Vardhan [4]
proposed to develop a site where a farmer can directly interact
with the Government. Crop damage claims also can be settled
online as per the proposed model. Chaudhary et al. [2]
462 6th International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development (INDIACom).
discussed the future scope of smart agricultural objects. IoT in
the agricultural domain with its operational analysis is
presented.
Indian Government is providing a platform (Figure 2) for
buying and selling crops and fertilizers online. The security
features for a secure financial transaction is a major challenge.
Fig. 2. Indian Government portal
III. PROPOSED MODEL
The proposed model (Smart Digi-farming) aims at
providing smart solutions to the farming community. The
farmer needs to travel here and there for all the different and
integral work of farming. This model emphasizes the use of
technology for efficient and feasible solutions. Dependence on
weather and exploitation by commission agents will be things
of the past. Several important works which they can easily
and remotely mange are as follows.
Figure 3 demonstrates the process of farming which is
mainly divided into three parts:
1. Sowing seeds
2. Maintaining crops
3. Crop ready for Digi-farming
In the first process of sowing seeds, two sub-processes
have been performed:
x Soil health testing
x Weather prediction
Soil health testing is a very important process which is
carried out for testing the nutrition value of land and for
checking condition of land, so that we can plan appropriate
crop which is suitable for that soil, or if we want to grow
another kind of product then we can process that soil and
make it ready for that product. Soil-ph sensor [17] is used for
carrying out this process. Testing soil in the lab will give you
the best results, but by using this sensor also you can have a
better idea about the condition of the soil.
Soil health testing is a very important process which is
carried out for testing the nutrition value of land and for
checking condition of land, so that we can plan appropriate
crop which is suitable for that soil, or if we want to grow
another kind of product then we can process that soil and
make it ready for that product. Soil-ph sensor [17] is used for
carrying out this process. Testing soil in the lab will give you better idea about the condition of the soil.
the best results, but by using this sensor also you can have a

Temperature
sensor, Humidity
sensor,...
Shows
Soil health test Weather prediction Appropriate crops
detail which are
suitable for farming Crops Senso
Sensors
s rs
selection data
Soil Ph Best suitable result
(sensor) will display form data
the collected data
Important
Instructions
and
notifications
notifications
s
Sowing
seeds

Soil moisture sensor Soil temperature sensor

Maintaining
crops
Traditional farmer Atmospheric pressure sensor Leaf wetness sensor

Weather Station Diameter Dendrometer

Crop ready for Digi-farming
Central
database

Digi Real Time Updates

Farming
(Smart
e-choupal / farming)
online selling
Apply Machine learning algorithm

Smart farmer

Fig. 3. Proposed Smart Digi-farming model

Weather performs a very important role, so after checking manage data and growth of their crop as well (Figure 4). Many
the soil condition, weather prediction is been done, which will hard works and time-oriented work can be easily and remotely
give you weather updates of upcoming time and real updates managed using IoT [14].
[24] of the temperature of your farm location as well.
Temperature and Humidity sensors [16] are some of the
sensors which are useful for this process.
The second stage after sowing the seeds is maintenance. A
well-maintained crop can lead the farmer to a good price while
selling crops. There are several sensors [13] like Soil moisture
sensor, Soil temperature sensor, Atmospheric pressure sensor
[25], Leaf wetness sensor, Weather station, and Diameter
Demeter is been used for checking the progress of crops and
maintaining the crops [12].
The product is ready for harvesting, farmers can have
multiple options like selling to the dealer and follow the same
cycle as traditional farming follows or they can use e-platform
for selling their crops directly to the customer, which is
beneficial for both farmers as well as the customer. This can
improve the revenue model of a farmer.
A. Using IoT
IoT [11] is the current technology which will make our life Fig. 4. One door for all solution
very easy. Earlier farmers need to do all the work by
themselves now by using this technology many of their work B. Online Banking
can be automated [18] and can be monitor properly with the Government is trying hard to connect each and every
help of sensors and cameras [10] which will help them to citizen with the bank; the major issue is the distance between

6th International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development (INDIACom). 463
 user and bank and lengthy and complicated working process
which utilize a lot of time of farmer. But now in Digital India
online banking seems like easy and secure. So a farmer can
handle their accounts and do their transactions online only
without going at the bank which is beneficial for farmer and
bank as well. They can apply for a loan, check their
application status, get the subsidy and grants and many more
related thing from one platform itself which can ease their
work and give them strength as well in form of financial help
from the government.
C. Direct connecting with the customer
The authentic things can be sold easily in the market and
even at better prices because that authentication works as a
trust factor for the user, they can buy that stuff without
hesitations. In current time Peoples are facing more health
problems so now they are even more concentrating on their
health side. We know how important food is for our health
concern, and in India there are rarely anyways through which
we can find the quality assurance of vegetable¶s, it would be
great if we try to implement e-commerce platform with
blockchain in agriculture sector so that customer can find out
that the things which they are eating are produced by whom
and in which condition and farmers can directly sell their
crops to customer through this platform. This direct
connection, as shown in Figure 5, will be helpful to both the
entity in many ways.
Fig. 5. Direct connection with the customer
D. Weather report
It would be so much beneficial for a farmer to have
accurate weather report of upcoming seasons so that they can
plan their plantation according to that weather report. They
can have some sort of idea how much rainfall will be there or
how hot or cold will be there in upcoming months so that they
can plan their crops according to weather report provided by
this one door for every solution model.
E. Learning new ways of farming
Everyday new and better techniques are found by the
scientist and farmers as well, but as there is no connection
between them they can't get those new ways of farming until
someone go there and taught them about that technique. So in
this new model as they are directly connected with the internet
they can have all important updates and new methodology
which is helping farmers to get updated and they can also see
the implementation of that way. They can watch videos and
V¶ µ&RQQHFWHG )DUP 6HUYLFHV¶´ LQ 3URF RI WKH ,(((
communicate with other farmers and with experts in their area
and learn new thing from them and implement it on their farm.
464 6th International Conference on Computing for Sustainable Global Development (INDIACom).
By using digital advertising methods (Figure 6),
Government can directly and effectively send their message to
the farmers and at very low cost and instant time compare to
current scenario in which they are spending crores of rupees
but still people are not getting the details of the scheme on
time
Fig. 6. Digital advertising
F. Trading crops
This is the main and very important part of the cycle as it's
directly related to the revenue model of farming. Many times
the prices are too low but still, they have to sell their crops
because they don't have many alternatives. They get fewer
prices but still, the customer has to pay the higher price of the
same as there are many middlemen in between who keeps on
adding their profit margin on the same crop which leads to
price rise. E-Commerce can be integrated where the farmer
can direct communication with the client/customer. Currently,
there is one web application available for trading which is
owned by the government but it's not user-friendly and secure.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the proposed model aims to improve the
social image of the farmer by giving technical know-how,
making them financially independent. This one-stop proposed
solution model will result in increased efficiency and revenue
as well. The model would equip farmers with weather
information, using IoT to optimize yield, learning new
techniques in farming, direct connection with customers and
online banking. The mobile application can be integrated with
this model to give all the information at fingertips ensuring
earning growth.
Future work and challenges include providing drone based
farming to decrease the physical effort of the farmer and
preventing waste of fertilizers while spraying them. A future
enhancement may also include automated healthcare facilities
for farmers.
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