Internet of Things in Smart Agriculture: Challenges, Opportunities and Future Directions

Owing to the ever-increasing world population it makes a doubt about feeding billions of people, as to the amount of current rate of agricultural food production, where it often hindered by many natural facts such as droughts, climate changes, floods, pests, and disease carriers and so on. Apart from that tendency towards traditional farming methods and obsolete skills of farmers, this would also lead to a reduction of agricultural food production where it is believed to be not enough by 2050 based on the latest predictions and subjected to the growing population. On the other hand, the entire planet and the human race is shaping with the advancement of various technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), where it can lead to the creation of a ubiquitous connection between every digital object that prevails in the world through the Internet. This has been applied in many domains including agriculture industry for automating most of the tasks which can reduce the amount of time; and to increase the overall efficiency and have a better crop yield, by making smarter decisions. The aim of this study is to identify and examine the role of IoT in leveraging this smart agriculture to the next level; thus making it sustainable in the long run. Hence in this study, we synthesize the recent challenges, opportunities, and future directions with regard to IoT-based smart agriculture, for carrying out further research in this area and for the betterment of human society.