Smart Farming: A Short Guide to Understanding Its Role & Benefits

Industries are always in flux, reacting to new discoveries and market pressures. In agriculture, farmers and land managers are working at the convergence of labor shortages, expensive external inputs, and public demand for sustainable practices. It’s an inflection point; agribusinesses must streamline operations and efficiencies while simultaneously decreasing costs and ensuring their land remains healthy and viable for future generations. They must operate smarter, not harder.  

Smart farming is more than an intelligent approach to managing crops and land, it’s a technological solution that more agribusinesses are turning to with positive results. At the same time, manufacturers are finding more ways to integrate smart farming technology into their equipment and machinery. Think AI for agriculture, farming robots, and top innovations for sustainable farming. As ag technologies advance, many farmers and land managers still have many questions. Gaining a better understanding of smart farming, its role, and benefits can help farmers take suitable steps to manage and scale their operations for today and the future. 

A farmer looks at a smart farming app on a laptop in the back of a pickup.

 

What is Smart Farming?

Smart farming, also known as smart agriculture, refers to the use of technology and data analytics to optimize agricultural operations and enhance sustainable agriculture practices. It involves incorporating advanced technologies like Internet of Things (IoT), AI for agriculture, and data analytics to manage a farm more efficiently and effectively.  

Collecting and analyzing data on things like soil, crops at the plant and block level, livestock feeding, weather, and soil composition enables farmers to make informed decisions, improve how resources (including labor) are used and allocated, reduce waste, and optimize the quantity and quality of crops all while minimizing environmental impact. These outcomes support sustainability and profitability while simultaneously helping agribusinesses become more resilient in the face of extreme weather, policy changes, and unpredictable input costs.  

The end goal is even larger in scope: a reliable food network filled with nutrient-rich produce and other ag products grown in a way that doesn’t mortgage the future against today’s gains. There’s another benefit; thriving, profitable medium-scale, smallholdings, specialty, and family farms are the backbone of vibrant rural communities. When these farms fail, rural communities struggle and falter.  

MT_May23_BlueberryDemo-FL-14

Smart Farming Tools & Technology

Smart agriculture involves sophisticated tools and technologies that collect the data and information necessary to optimize operations and processes. These can include:   

  • Sensors for gathering accurate, moment-to-moment data on soil quality or soil moisture, air humidity, insolation (incoming solar radiation), water quality, temperature, and more.  
  • Specialized farming software platforms for gathering data, relaying alerts, and sending information or commands to automated farming machines like electric tractors, irrigation systems, temperature control systems, and more.  
  • Connectivity technology like cellular and Wi-Fi connections. IoT devices can typically connect with each other, enabling software to collect data and store it in the cloud so farmers and land managers can access it through an app, helping them make the best decisions in real time. 
  • Location technology like satellites and GPS systems. 
  • Robotic farming technologies like autonomous tractors, rotary milking carousels and automated milking stalls, drones, automatic feeders, processing facilities, etc.  
  • Data analytics software and AI platforms to help gather crucial data about the operation of a farm for optimized decision making. Fueled by AI, predictive analytics can take data from machinery and other technologies.  
  • Farming-specific software applications such as field mapping, inventory tracking, financial tracking, or crop planning.  
Monarch's MK-V dairy tractor robotically pushes feed for cows.

Sustainable and regenerative farming is the path to agriculture’s long-term success and resiliency against stressors like extreme weather, ecosystem collapse, and market volatility around external inputs. It supports the conservation and regeneration of natural resources and systems while maintaining economic viability for farmers and rural communities. It is possible to define sustainable farming with profitability and productivity.

 

Agriculture Technology Terminology: Precision Farming vs. Digital Farming vs. Smart Farming 

Smart farming is often used interchangeably with precision agriculture and digital farming. While there is overlap and these practices work together to create an optimized, operational system, they aren’t entirely synonymous with one another. 

 Precision Farming 

According to the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, precision farming, or precision ag refers to site specific crop management. Instead of a blanket application that works for the average type of soil, nutrients, moisture, weed type, and so on, precision farming uses various technologies, including smart farming technologies, to manage these different parts of a crop. This results in avoiding over- or under-application of inputs, such as fertilizer, herbicides, irrigation, and pesticides. Technologies include in-field data collection and remotely sensed data that quantifies spatially variable field conditions.  

Digital Farming 

When something is described as digital, it generally is in reference to computerized technology. That covers a lot of territory. To avert ambiguity, the Global AgTech Intiative, narrows the definition of digital farming describing it as applying precision location methods and decision quality agronomic information to illuminate, predict, and affect the continuum of cultivation issues across the farm. Sound like a mouthful? Digital farming centers on extracting value from data, moving from simple data collection to generating actionable insights and significant benefits from that information. Digital agriculture unites the principles of precision farming and smart farming.  

Monarch's MK-V electric tractor is surrounded by rendered images showcasing its smart farming tech platform.

Putting it All Together 

If you want to know the capabilities and potential of smart farming, it’s helpful to look at a manufacturer engineering smart farming and land management solutions. Monarch Tractor, an industry leader in ag robotics and agriculture technology specialist, brings digital, precision, and smart farming concepts together. Monarch is the developer of Wingspan Ag Intelligence (WingspanAI), an advanced AI computing and technology platform that integrates with other equipment manufacturers and operating system for the MK-V, Monarch’s modular platform that powers electrification, driver-optional autonomy, and data intelligence. WingspanAI empowers the MK-V with autonomy, automated lane centering, and provides live and historical video footage of operations. It also collects detailed data on emissions savings for pollution prevention, energy usage, miles driven, when the tractor was deployed, its speed, the tractor operator, and more.  

With Monarch’s open ecosystem, when developers create a service or a new application, they don’t have to build it from the ground up, Monarch’s WingspanAI gives them a platform. Third-party AI companies can also use the MK-V as a platform for specialized applications. For instance, in partnership with Scout, a leading AI-supported precision viticulture data platform, the MK-V can be armed with a digital implement that collects detailed, plant-level data for analysis during the tractor’s routine operations like mowing and undervine cultivation. Vineyard farmers are using this information to extend vineyard lifespan, strengthen sustainable agriculture practices and unlock savings and better long-term financial performance. The MK-V paired with Scout’s data-collection platform represents one of the top innovations in sustainable farming for vineyards.  

 

What Is the Scope & Role of Smart Farming in Modern Agriculture?

For decades, prevailing modern agricultural practices have been migrating away from their organic, regenerative farming roots to a conglomerated, industrialized system dependent on diesel and toxic petrochemicals to manage weeds and pests, and fertilize the soil so plants can grow. Nutrient-depleted soil is less fertile and more prone to erosion, and the diesel-powered engines in massive farm machinery release a steady stream of particulate emissions into the air increasing air pollution, and with it, chronic heart and lung diseases, especially in children and the elderly, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Diesel particulate emissions also contribute to the production of ground-level ozone, which damages vegetation and property, affects soil and water, and enters the human food chain. As air, water, and land quality diminish, farmer livelihoods and food security are threatened.  

When leveraged properly, smart farming has the potential to shift agricultural operations to a more regenerative and sustainable model that unlocks long-term profitability. In fact, smart farming tools and technologies can potentially improve nearly every element of the agricultural industry, ranging from data-gathering to dairy feed pushing to crop and livestock monitoring to tractor operation and more.  

In many cases, farmers and land managers practice smart farming without necessarily knowing it. For example, something as simple as using a mobile banking app for your agribusiness is a form of smart farming. Alternatively, farmers might practice smart farming by:  

  • Deploying electric vehicles, like driver-optional tractors with data-gathering technologies. 
  • Using remote monitoring tools and sensors.  
  • Leveraging data analytics to better understand their agribusiness and its key metrics
monarch electric tractor vs diesel tractor (2)
 

What Are the Benefits of Deploying Smart Farming Technologies?

Integrating smart farming technologies into a farm or land management operation does indeed make someone a smart farmer. Here’s why: 

Labor Challenges

Robotic farming operations, like automated feed pushing performed by Monarch’s MK-V Dairy tractor, means a farmer can ensure there is enough labor to cover time-sensitive issues without sacrificing feed schedule reliability. Regular feeding is key to high yields. While there are dedicated automated, electric feed pushers on the market, Monarch’s MK-V Dairy tractor doesn’t require a track system and can perform additional tractor operations making it more useful for workers and farm operations.  

Efficiency  

Good data drives good decision-making, and smart farming machinery can be equipped to gather and report data on key components. Smart technology in a tractor can provide farm owners and managers with key metrics on machinery operations and performance. The MK-V will even report emissions savings, helping an agribusiness track reporting for organic farming certifications and their buyers.  

Financial Stability & Cost Savings

With smart farm data analytics, farmers can better understand the finances of their operations and make cuts or improvements where necessary. On top of that, implementing more efficient farming equipment like smart, electric tractors, and other machinery helps farmers eliminate fuel costs. Electrification in farm machinery like a compact tractor represents one of the top innovations in sustainable farming. An agribusiness can conduct zero-emission operations for mowing, cover crop seeding, and undervine cultivation, thus dramatically reducing and even eventually eliminating the need for toxic herbicide applications and related expenses such as staying compliant in managing and using these substances.  

Productivity & Higher Sustained Yields

Reduction of herbicide use as part of a regenerative or sustainable farming plan helps boost the soil’s nutrient profile, biome, moisture content, on which healthier, hardier plants depend. Good soil also serves as a form of insurance for greater resiliency against droughts and erosion. These practices support higher yields with growth that stewards the soil health year after year, without depleting it and compromising its role in the greater ecosystem  

A lush vineyard, farmed with sustainable agriculture practices.

What Are the Long-Term Economic Implications of Smart Farming? 

Smart farming practices are already boosting farm profitability and helping with financial stability. When applied thoughtfully, smart farming technology strengthens good stewardship practices so agribusinesses can remain viable for years to come. Looking ahead, pay attention to major players in the ag robotics space and alliances between OEMs and specialists in AI for agriculture that are innovating specialized features, parts, and applications. Data analytics, connectivity, and robotics work together to unify field operations, monitor machine performance, and manage fleets, even for medium-scale and smallholding operations. 

With so much to gain and so many entry points for integration, it’s no surprise that smart farmers and land managers are embracing smart farming. 

 

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