Crop Selection for Monocrop and

Intercrop Systems by using Agriculture

4.0 Techniques
The future of agriculture cannot be achieved without digital tools and a strong thrust from
technological innovation. With increasing consumer awareness of environmental issues and the
need to better manage available resources, new concepts of traceability, quality, and control are
gaining traction. Farmers now use automated harvesters, drones, autonomous tractors, seeding,
and weeding to transform how they cultivate their crops. The technology takes care of menial
and recurring tasks, allowing them to focus on more critical functions.

Agriculture 4.0

Agriculture 4.0 incorporates the evolution of precision farming and refers to all actions that are
carried out in agriculture based on a, precise and accurate analysis of data and
information collected and transmitted through advanced tools and technology.

This refers to the tools and strategies that enable the synergistic use of a range of digital 4.0
technologies, in turn allowing the automatic collection, integration and analysis of data collected
from the field, from sensors, or from other third-party sources.

Aims and Scope

The aim of these technologies is to offer the most extensive and precise support to farmers in the
decision-making process related to their activity and the relationship with other parties in the
supply chain.

The ultimate goal is to increase economic, environmental, and social sustainability as well as
profitability of agricultural processes.
Agriculture 4.0 refers to the use of Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data, Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics to extend, speeds up, and increase the efficiency of activities that affect the entire
production chain.

Adopting 4.0 solutions in agriculture means:

 Avoiding unnecessary waste by calculating the exact water requirements of the crop or
detecting in advance the onset of certain plant diseases or pests

 Having greater control over cost and being able to plan all stages of cultivation,
sowing and harvesting with a great deal of precision, saving both time and money

 Improving the traceability of the supply chain can result in a short supply chain that is
capable of producing high quality food in a sustainable manner with little margin for
error.

Agriculture 4.0 technologies and data management

When we talk about agriculture 4.0 we are referring in particular to

 The use of the most innovative technologies

 The ability to manage the amount of data and information coming in from the fields

 The ability to interpret them in a useful way for the sector.

However, what are the main technologies that can be used to digitalize an agricultural
enterprise?

Drones and sensors

 Drones are small unmanned aircraft that are able to monitor crops in real time as well as
transmit images and useful information. They are mainly used for land mapping, but the
most advanced versions adopt infrared sensors and imagery systems to detect problems
that cannot be detected by the naked eye.
  Environmental sensors, on the other hand, are capable of recording climatic weather data
and information on soil moisture requirements.

Internet of Things (IoT)

This technology enables a variety of tools (e.g. drones, sensors or satellites) to connect and
communicate with each other in order to exchange information as well as data useful for
improving crop development conditions.

Big Data

 The concept of Big Data refers to all the information and data generated by various
technologies and that will assist in making more efficient decisions during the production
process.

 As a result, these datasets are very different since they originate from different sources
and must be processed by artificial intelligence to provide practical answers to certain
problems.

Artificial intelligence

 With this term, we refer to the technology that instructs machines to assess specific
situations and make decisions in real-time.

 The accumulation and ability to process and interpret large amounts of data is the main
input for machine learning.

 There are two main areas of application

 Robotics using machines that automate certain tasks

 management software that reduces the working hours that employees spend doing
automatic and repetitive tasks

Cloud
  It is a set of accessible services and shared resources on the network; it is a useful tool
to ensure access to certain technologies and data for a larger number of people.

 The management of data and information is very important to understand the economic
value of this information for each individual company using it.

 understand what data are really useful and how they can be used (technology
management level)

Why it pays to move to agriculture 4.0: the advantages

Nonetheless, there is still a great deal of reticence towards this new way of understanding
agriculture and the new technologies associated with it. However, there is no doubt that
agriculture 4.0 offers a number of advantages.
Economic advantages
Despite the costs of the technologies, the real economic benefits of this type of farming and tools
are well established. Greater control over activities leads to optimization of resources and
consequently to less wastage of water and fertilizer. All this translates into savings for the
farmer. We are talking about savings on production inputs of around 30% with a productivity
increase of 20%.
Environmental benefits
There is one aspect of agriculture that should not be underestimated, and that is sustainability,
which will be a defining characteristic of the agriculture of the future. Agriculture 4.0 is
specifically designed to improve the sustainability of agricultural activity and the environmental
impact of the entire food chain.
Benefits for the worker
It is well established that new technologies also improve the working conditions of the operator.
In fact they are made less burdensome thanks to the support of digital and innovative tools.
Health benefits
A constant and precise monitoring of each stage of the production chain translates into a higher
quality end product, which is undoubtedly beneficial to health. It is estimated that products in a
high-tech supply chain retain their properties and are therefore healthier.
Problem Statement
The conventional approaches using for data collection are not very efficient and time consuming.
In earlier techniques the data was collected by surveys or from local agricultural departments that
was unreliable and inefficient. By sensor devices, it is easy to collect real time data and use it for
decision making. The farmers use primitive knowledge and guess for farming activities which
are a bottleneck as most think that the crop they have selected is suitable according to previous
techniques.

Research Questions

 What type of challenges face by farmers for crop selection by smart farming system?
 How the model is trained to select suitable crop by soil analysis?
 How solutions can be found for farming challenges?
 What sensors can be used to for parameters assessment?

Objectives
The aim of this study is to find latest techniques to make system automated and efficient for
selecting right crop by doing soil analysis. We can also apply same techniques for intercropping.
For intercropping, crop selection is also a critical task as if crops are not compatible with each
other then they can harm and make a huge loss to crop yield.
 Figure 1: Parameters Selection.

Hypothesis of Study
The hypothesis of study is to make an efficient system for crop selection by doing smart soil
analysis for both monocrop and intercrop systems. There are various parameters that can
directly and indirectly effect the crop health are temperature, humidity, pH, soil moisture,
weather and some primary soil nutrient Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (NPK) etc. We
have selected few parameters for data analysis and for authenticity of our research. For data
collection we will use sensors to make our system automatic.