Self sustaining farms

Its a concept that I would want to experiment one day. Been pondering this for almost a year now.

If India has to sort out its energy crisis, agricultural problems, labour issues, inflation etc.. There is an easy way out. This concept is not something that I have read somewhere or heard someone speaking about, I have spent sometime on studying the farming and agriculture in our country. For some reason, we have not seen any new innovations in agriculture. Is the world forgetting a fundamental industry ?

Some of the factors giving low farm outputs

1. Water — We have to wait for rain or for electricity ! Even if we have ground water and borewells, we need electricity to pump the water out. And if there is a dearth in rain, neither there is electricity to run the pumps, nor water to grow our crops. Its a double whammy.

2. Fragmented land ownership — We cannot employ automated systems like in developed countries to give us better yields.

3. Labor — Since agriculture is so hard, youth are not interested. Sometimes, electricity is “given” to farmlands late night and these folk are expected to pump water during those times and grow the crops.

4. No crop information — What should a farmer grow to get optimal price. This can also solve diversity in our food production. We will not have excess of tomatoes during some months and have absolute crisis during others.

The concept of self sustaining farms would probably be the most disruptive inventions of IoT. Certainly, the most impactful one for India.

When I say self sustaining farms. I mean a combination of the following :

1. Solar powered battery to pump out water — Completely possible.

2. IoT soil sensors — Gives exact condition of the soil. It can guide the fertiliser input, water requirement etc.

3. Mini drones to spray fertilizers and keep the pests off. CCTV cameras can also help farmers to focus the drones. Need not be auto pilot drones.

4. A harvesting robot. — Or can be manual as well, since harvesting is going to be a one time effort.

All of these are available. The “research” part of the tech is done. No one, to my knowledge has implemented it in India as a complete system. Am pretty sure, the concept is tried in parts like drip irrigation, some robots to harvest (large farm problem), green house construction etc..

Even if we build these techniques over the green house constructions, the whole system is made so much more dependable, easily manageable and independent — self-sustaining!

Originally posted : Nov 8th, 2015 at

https://amnesiacworld.tumblr.com/post/132782196404/self-sustaining-farms

Originally published at https://www.tumblr.com.