Abstract

The world population growth is projected to increase in the coming years and it brings along challenges such as food insecurity and increasing demand for food as a result of production challenges. For these reasons, sustainable and innovative agriculture practices are given higher priority. Smart farming is one of the innovative practices which has seen a significant growth as a result of improved technology and it is a novel farm management method that uses technologies to optimize farming activities and increase productivity. Many reviews on application of IoTs for farming have been published which shows significant contributions in this area of research. In existing reviews, the focus is mainly on areas like Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAC) and network topologies, technologies and protocols. This work uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology to make a systematic review of current state of IoTs for farming by identifying the state-of-the-art sensing, networking, communication and data management technologies commonly used to implement the solution. The work demonstrates the growing importance of IoTs in farm management and reveals a significant improvement in the way sensor data are stored and processed. It also shows a rise in the usage of supporting technologies like cloud computing, artificial intelligence and image processing techniques for storing and processing big data in efficient and less tedious ways.

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