Smart Agriculture

Agriculture represents a key business domain with a high level of employment, large global surface areas dedicated to growing crops and livestock, as well as the relevance of its purpose of nourishing an increasing population. Digital products and services are promising diverse potentials to help farmers matching ambitious targets on sustainability at social, economic, and environmental level. The application of Internet of Things (IoT) based solutions is one of the underlying digital enablers that are connecting the real world from farm to fork with its virtual representation at the different stakeholders. To validate the potentials of IoT technologies, the IoF2020 project groups 33 uses cases that transform cutting-edge IoT technologies into real solutions useful for farmers. This chapter builds on this experience providing examples for a successful usage of such IoT enablers in agriculture, facilitating the design and management of project on this area. At the same time, this chapter highlights the challenge for system and solution designers facing specific barriers in the agri-food sector, due to the lack of knowledge of diverse agri-food stakeholders or a complex regulatory framework. Considering technical constraints, IoF2020 provided several lessons for the deployment of IoT devices in the farms. Authors elaborate from them a tailor-made process for architecture analysis and design, successfully tested in the cases of the IoF2020 project. Strongly recommended are the participatory approach and agile procedures, collecting requirements from end users at the starting point and taking advantage of its participation to improve different iterations of the digital products and services in agriculture.