The Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture (IoT4Ag)

By 2050, the US population is estimated to grow to 400 million and the world population to 9.7 billion. Current agricultural practices account for 70% of global water use, energy use is one of the largest costs on a farm, and inefficient use of agrochemicals is damaging Earth’s ecosystems. With finite arable land, water, and energy resources, ensuring food, energy, and water security requires new technologies to improve the efficiency of food production, create sustainable approaches to supply energy, and enable water conservation. The opportunity for technological innovation to improve agricultural practices and production and thus to ensure the health and prosperity of humanity has been highlighted in recent reports by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the World Bank, and the United Nations. That’s where IoT4Ag comes in. The Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture, an NSF Engineering Research Center, was launched in 2020 to address the grand challenge of food, energy, and water security. At IoT4Ag, we are creating and deploying technologies to increase crop production, while minimizing the use of energy and water resources and the impact of agricultural practices on the environment. IoT4Ag unites faculty and students from the University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, the University of California Merced, and the University of Florida with industry and government partners and end-users within farming communities to transform agriculture.