These are a few of the tasks where the digital transformation is common practice in the agriculturally developed countries.

• Crop monitoring

Linking offers a wide variety of methods to improve crop monitoring and care. By integrating weather data, irrigation, nutrients and data from the other systems, we can improve the usage of resources and increase crop yield by having a more precise approach to identifying and anticipating the shortcomings. For example, the soil sensors that monitor the soil conditions can communicate through LPWAN and target the sprinklers to adjust the water and nutrient usage. The sensors can also deliver pictures from the far corners of the fields to help the farmers in making informed and timely decisions and get early warnings for issues such as crop disease and pests.

Smart monitoring can also help farmers optimize the harvest period. Tracking crops for quality traits, for example, sugar contents and fruit color, can help farmers increase the yield of their crops.

• Livestock monitoring

Preventing disease epidemics and detecting animals in distress are of key importance in managing a big livestock farm, where most of the animals are being bred with a mode of operation that has them in narrow spaces in order to secure ease of movement through the highly automated management system. Chips and sensors that measure body temperature, heart rate and blood pressure, among other indicators, can detect diseases in the early stages, thus preventing a widespread herd infection and improving the food quality. The farmers already use ear tagging technology from service providers such as Smartbrow (part of Zoetis) to monitor heat, wellbeing and location of cows, or technologies from companies such as Allflex to have a comprehensive monitoring method in cases of disease outbreaks.

Similar to this, environment sensors can automatically adjust ventilation and heating in the stables, decrease the stress levels and improve the overall life conditions, which is an ever-increasing point of interest to the consumers. Improved monitoring of the animal wellbeing and the growth conditions can result in a value increase of about 70-90 billion of dollars until 2030.

• Facilities and equipment management

Silo and warehouse capacity measuring chips and sensors can lead to automating the process of yield storage, reducing the storage costs for farmers. Some of them already use such systems from providers such as Blue Level Technologies. Similar tools can improve the expiry rate of incoming products and decrease after-harvest product loss by monitoring and automatically optimizing the warehouse conditions. Facility usage and condition monitoring has the potential to reduce energy consumption.

These solutions can lead to savings of 40-60 billion dollars to 2030.

• Automated agricultural machinery

Having a more precise control of the GPS devices that are connected with computer monitoring and sensors can facilitate the deployment of smart, automated agridultural machinery. Farmers can simultaneously manage various equipment on their field without any human intervention, which will free up time and other resources. Automated machinery is more efficient and precise in field work than the human operated variants. That can generate fuel savings and larger yield. Increasing the machine autonomy through better connection can lead to an added value of 50-60 billion dollars until 2030.