IoT-Based Solution to Reduce Waste and Promote a Sustainable Farming Industry

Waste and the necessity to increase sustainability in the farming industry are some of the challenges addressed in the agri-food chain. With the potential of digital technologies, e.g., the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence, to revolutionize agriculture by enabling more efficient and intelligent monitoring, system architecture and IoT nodes were developed to support relevant parameters for composing a Sustainability Index for the Bio-economy (siBIO). These nodes are scalable, modular, capable of meeting on-demand production needs, and provide a cost-effective alternative to commercial solutions or manual data collection methods. The collected data is transmitted to middleware and then stored, analyzed, and displayed on a user-friendly dashboard, providing data to siBIO and consequently contributing to a more sustainable farming industry and reducing waste of resources and food. The results include the implementation of IoT nodes in a case study involving a vineyard and an apple orchard. The nodes are successfully collecting data on environmental, operational, and energy parameters such as temperature, air humidity, soil moisture, precipitation, and water and electricity consumption for irrigation. The tests of data transmission and collection, functionality and robustness of the proposed solution were promising, offering a way to quantify the sustainability index and facilitate the exchange of agricultural information in a reliable and standardized way.

IoT-Based Solution to Reduce Waste and Promote a Sustainable Farming Industry Artigo de Conferência