GiZ: Driving force for food security shall incline more on IoT

Farming and agricultural industry now relies on innovative ideas and technological advancements to help increase yields and better allocation resources Mutembei Kariuki, regional co-ordinator Make IT Africa, GiZ said during the recent IoT and AI Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya.

At the summit themed: Harnesseing the Power to Driver Customer Experience, Kariuki stated that the late 19th century and the 20th century brought a number of mechanical innovations, like tractors and harvesters which today’s driving force for food security inclines on increased agricultural production at a lower cost is the Internet of Things (IoT), which leaves the door wide open for engineers looking to bring a smart farming solution or IoT agricultural sensor to market.

“The Internet of Things applications in agriculture include farm vehicle tracking, livestock monitoring, storage monitoring, and much more,” Kariuki shared the examples noting that livestock sensors can notify ranchers when animals have roamed from the herd so that ranch hands can round them up. Soil sensors can alert farmers to irregular conditions like high acidity, giving the farmer time to reconcile the issue and produce better crops while self-driving tractors can be controlled remotely, providing significant savings in labor costs.

The next several years will see increasing use of these and other smart farming technologies.

According to Kariuki, IoT devicce installations in the agriculture world are projected to experience a compound annual growth rate of 20 percent. “This is an area that Kenya has every reason to tap into to uphold while embarking on the journey of Big Four Agenda.

In Kenya  a number of connected agricultural devices is expected to a million at the end of 2018.