Nokia and Vodafone India Foundation, the CSR arm of Vi (formerly Vodafone Idea), have deployed a smart agriculture solution that aims to improve the productivity of farmers in India.
The pilot of Vodafone India Foundation’s SmartAgri project is being implemented in 100 locations in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. The partners in the project say it will benefit over 50,000 farmers in the region by enhancing their productivity and income.
This smart agriculture-as-a-service approach, which utilizes Nokia’s Worldwide IoT Network Grid (WING) solution, will ensure that precise and practical data is sent to farmers enabling them to enhance productivity.
Over 400 sensors have been deployed over 100,000 hectares of farmland to collect various data points which are then analysed by a cloud-based and localized smart agriculture app. The app provides local language support as well as weather forecast and irrigation management information. The sensors generate insights that help to improve soy and cotton crop yields.
Crop management through WING can include smart irrigation, smart pesticide control and proactive information-sharing frameworks on crops and weather, as well as a platform for commodity exchange. The use case can also employ remotely piloted aircraft system technology or drones instead of traditional sensors for crop management.
Smart agriculture is, the project partners say, a leading use case that India is exploring in the 5G era. The complete end-to-end solution from Nokia WING is supported by deep domain expertise and an agriculture partner eco-system. Its aim is to help the Vodafone India Foundation improve agricultural practices by introducing IoT-based solutions.
