IoT based Sustainable Agriculture - Advances, Challenges and Opportunities

The agricultural sector faces many perennial challenges such as high cost and/or scarcity of labor, endemic plant and livestock diseases, and unfavourable climatic changes, which finally leads to loss of productivity. Since agriculture is the backbone of many nations, research towards its sustainability is extremely desired. More importantly, sustainable agriculture is needed to ensure global food security. This global imperative requires a comprehensive up-to-date knowledge in the domain of sustainable agriculture, in which the opportunities and evaluation of its modern technologies are fully understood. Furthermore, prevailing challenges encountered while undertaking agricultural activities along with future research directions need to be brought to the fore to equip researchers, engineers, and policymakers of this domain to be able to appraise the current standings to improve upon them with motivating and innovative ideas. This paper reviews recent advances in precision agriculture and outlines ideas from an engineering perspective for improving sustainable agriculture while ensuring environmental quality.