Security Concerns in Smart Agriculture and Blockchain-based Solution

Smart farming is generally defined as an IT-based intelligent farming system that finds, analyses, and manages field variability by carrying out crop production activities at the right location, time, and method for maximum profitability, sustainability, and land resource conservation. Precision farming can result in high profitability and production but heavily depends on the accuracy of provided data and decision-making. While IoT can be very handy in collecting and processing crop and environment data in a precise and timely manner, at the same time, Blockchain technology can be utilized to preserve the sense data and provide a platform for the immutability of records to accurately and precisely store the crop products data and environment. Integrating Blockchain and IoT technologies in precision farming can manage the requirements of precision farming in developing an intelligent application that will minimize resource consumption and help in high crop yield while maintaining quality standards. Although there are several benefits of adopting smart agriculture and IoT-based technologies, there are several security concerns related to these technologies. This article reviews the basics of smart agriculture, components, and security issues. Further, it proposes a blockchain-based model for the secure integration of smart agriculture components to provide security and reliability.