Through smart agriculture, we are able to have exact data from the fields that farmers want to monitor. This allows farmers to view data for several different metrics, including rainfall, humidity, and air pressure. In addition, connected sensors also allow us to view and track data from other sensors in outside fields. This has a variety of benefits for farmers, their crops, and the sensor technology, including the following:
MORE DATA FOR MORE ACCURACY
The more data you have, the more accurate it usually is. It’s a fundamental truth of science that the larger a sample size is (also known as a data pool), the more accurate it’s patterns and findings are going to be. Not only is it key to have a large amount of data on your own crops, but also learning about the trends and patterns of farmers who have fields nearby, or who grow the same crops in a similar climate, you can learn to better predict seeding, watering, and fertilization schedules.
BUILDS COMMUNITY
By sharing data, you are building a community of farmers that can work together to better optimize agriculture. When sharing your own findings benefits others, you’ll find much more pride and a sense of belonging in the community. According to US news source CNN, feeling like you belong within a group of people can lead to a greater sense of wellbeing and happiness.
When you feel content about your place in the world, you are much more likely to be more productive and collaborative. By providing useful data that is helpful to other sensor users, you are helping to further technology and crop management as a whole.
SHOWS SENSORS PROVIDERS AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT
Viewing more data can allow you to give better feedback to the sensor providers, which can help them decide what additional metrics need to be tracked. Tracking systems are only as good as the feedback they receive. When sensor providers or the software creators get large samples of feedback from the biggest source of customers that they can, they are more likely to find the issues and bugs that are causing frustration for customers. If you are having issues with your own data, analyze cloud data to see if there are patterns of a bug that could be fixed by updating the technology.
COMPARE OTHER SIMILAR FIELDS TO YOUR OWN
Another value in crowd-sourced data is to help you get insight on how to better maintain and grow your own crops. By looking at the weather conditions of similar fields and then comparing it to your own, you can predict the best outcome based on what others’ previous experiences have shown.
Comparing data can also help you see where something needs to be changed or added. This can lead to better predictions of crop yield.
