Climate Change and Precision Farming | Yuktix Technologies

 

The world is experiencing alarming Climate change and Climate if unchecked is an urgent threat to health, food supplies, biodiversity, and livelihoods across the globe. Agriculture is affected significantly by climate change; however, it is one of the main sources of greenhouse gases. As per the researches, it is found that Agriculture is among the largest contributors to climate change. Contributes to Approx 25% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, which makes it the world’s second-largest emitter after the energy sector.

 

Some of the worrying statistics around Green House Gases emission from agriculture are: 53% nitrous oxide (N2O) and 5% carbon dioxide (CO2), and also the constant flooding of the Rice paddies fields creates similar, anaerobic conditions which favor methane production. A massive amount of Carbon dioxide originates from the burning of fossil fuel, machinery used in agriculture. The excessive usage of Nitrogen fertilizers and chemicals for an increase in yield and quality of crops increases N2O (Nitrogen Oxide) and Nitrogen oxide results in making the atmosphere 300 times warmer than an equal amount of carbon dioxide.

 

Every year around 10 billion trees are cut down for agriculture, the overutilization of land, loss of soil organic matter, Salinisation of soils, acidification of soil has some irreparable loss to the climate and ecosystem. The impact of climate on global food security is not only on food supply but also on food quality, food access, and utilization. Climate usually affects the nutritional value of crops. Research proves due to an increased level of carbon dioxide; the concentrations of minerals in some crops (e.g. wheat, rice, and soybeans) can be up to 8 percent lower than normal. Protein concentrations may also be lower, while carbohydrates are higher.

The inappropriate use of natural resources due to lack of agricultural information results in overutilization of natural resources resulting in wastage of natural resources and also directly affect climate. Due to climate change, there has been an increase in droughts, floods, and locust outbreaks, etc. that is resulting in declining yields, these sudden climatic changes heighten the pre-existing problems for farmers globally. The studies suggest that global climate change will reduce agricultural productivity by roughly 17% by 2050

 

In the present situation Precision agriculture comes to the rescue. Precision agriculture helps to optimize returns agricultural yields and to minimize potential environmental impact and wastages. The use of Site-Specific management or Variable rate application (VRA) technology identifies which areas have a fertilizer deficiency and which have just enough and thus help manage excessive use of chemicals and fertilizers.VRA technology helps in increasing soil fertility and yields by reducing and managing nutritional imbalances, crop stress, and pest infestations. Also, a reduction in the use of fertilizers and other pesticides facilitates a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions and less contamination of soil and water bodies. According to World Economic Forum with Precision agricultural practices global yield could drastically increase 10-15% by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions and water wastage can decline by 15-20% provided 15-25% of the farms of a region start adopting precision agriculture.

With precision farming, there is an increase in yields that implies the possibility of increasing production with less water and without expanding the agricultural area, which means less deforestation and depletion of natural resources. Constant usage of crop monitoring through Drones and remote sensing techniques helps in keeping a check on the incidence of plagues and diseases thus making it easier to contain epidemics. Farmers can take timely corrective and preventive measures by appropriately using the advanced technology

The Smart devices and sensors generate and obtain real-time data, Micro –weather data, facilitates field testing, wind sensing that helps farmers with better farm management, Irrigation Management, Disease Management, Soil Management, etc. The digital advisory Services helps better climate monitoring that immensely helps farmer take well informed and intelligent decisions. The use of solar energy in operating Smart devices helps reduce the burden on non-renewable resources and also a solution for pollution.

 

Yuktix combating Climate change with Precision agriculture

Yuktix understands the current farming trend and provides smart farming technologies to monitor and act, on individual farm assets in a targeted way. Yuktix provides sensor-based devices that provide data for better decision-making across the agriculture value chain. Yuktix Micro weather station collects real-time data from fields by using sensors like temperature, humidity, pressure, rain, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, evaporation, soil moisture, etc.  Thus this real-time data helps farmers know the actual farm conditions and then take decisions. This helps reduce over or under-utilization of resources.

 

The devices at Yuktix have been effectively and efficiently assisting farmers in Disease prediction, Pest Prediction, Irrigation Management. Yuktix's Agriculture dashboard using Satellite Imaging provides Statistics like NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index). The NDVI helps in Crop Monitoring, farmers can track changes in the NDVI for individual fields throughout the season; can monitor both the crop rotation patterns and the current vegetation rates. With the help of user-friendly charts, the app visualizes different types of data, including the vegetation indices, temperature, precipitation rate, growth stages, historical weather, etc. NDVI rates help in the identification of high productivity zones, as well as discover the weak points in the field that require special treatment. Each zone, at every growth stage, needs a different amount of fertilizer and irrigation treatment. Farmers also get notified every time an abnormal change of the NDVI value has been detected, helping them make well-informed agricultural decisions promptly.

 

Yuktix GreenSense provides a Smart Irrigation System that consists of Soil Moisture Sensors, Rainfall sensors that measure soil moisture based on factors ETO (Evapotranspiration)calculations, Rainfall data, and soil moisture data, enabling farmers to take appropriate decisions on irrigation eliminating water wastage. Yuktix understands and cares for the environment, thus the devices are optimized for low power consumption. The devices can run on batteries or solar power for years without requiring a change. 

It is clear that the impact of agriculture is huge, Precision agriculture has a significant role to play in dealing with the Climate imbalance due to agriculture. Combining the conventional farming methods with Smart ways and equipping farms and farmers in soil management practices could reduce the carbon and other greenhouse gas footprints drastically. Over the years there have been, massive development in the field of IoT in agriculture and now Implementing agri-tech has become easier than ever before. The is extremely necessary to exploit technology and leverage precision farming in developing local and global strategies for a reasonable and smooth agriculture transition while addressing climate change. Real-time data-backed agriculture will establish the most favorable farms with ideal crop yields and restrain food wastages along with lower environmental impact by efficient use of need-based agri- inputs in farming.