Transformative Solar-Powered Automation for Sustainable Farming and Post-Harvest Operations

Indian agriculture is typically bound with a lot of manual work and these traditional agricultural practices are becoming inefficient and unsustainable in the face of global climate change, population growth, and limited resources. To increase agriculture’s production, profitability, and sustainability, it is necessary to implement innovative and automated systems. The three autonomous systems for agriculture that are proposed in this project are a solar-powered plant irrigation system, a solar dryer, and a storage warehouse temperature management system for farming and post-harvest operations. The solar-powered plant irrigation system utilizes solar energy to power a water pump that irrigates crops in the field by involving the use of IoT. The system is cost-effective and reduces water consumption by up to 70%. The solar dryer system is an innovative solution to the post-harvest challenge of proper drying of agricultural products. The technical approach of the solar dryer system involves the use of a Nichrome coil as a heating element which is powered by the solar-powered battery system. The storage warehouse temperature management system is an automatic solution to the adaptive temperature management of the storage space of yield produced after drying. The system is equipped with sensors and automatic control systems that regulate the storage conditions, preventing spoilage and reducing post-harvest losses. Hence these systems would provide a solution to reduce the manual work of farmers in all the three important stages of agricultural practices right from farming to drying and storage thereby ensuring the gain of productive and profitable yield