IoT in agriculture:
market state, use cases & real-life examples

April 22, 2025

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IoT in agriculture

by Ilya Katlinsky,

Solution Architect

IoT in agriculture involves using interconnected sensors and devices to monitor real-time data on weather, soil condition, and livestock and integrated analytics systems to get actionable insights that can help increase yield, reduce resource wastage, and enhance sustainability.

With 5+ years of experience in IoT development services provision, Itransition builds robust IoT-enabled smart farming solutions that help optimize labor-intensive aspects of farmers’ work, from crop harvesting to livestock farming.

Agricultural IoT market state

The global agriculture industry is faced with significant challenges, including the growing population and increased food consumption, as well as climate change and its consequences like increased droughts, floods, and related resource shortages. To address the rising product demand and worsening climate conditions, the agricultural sector has embraced multiple advanced technologies, including IoT, which helps farmers become more efficient and increase agricultural production while keeping costs at bay. As IoT in agriculture proves its efficiency and shows increasing promise, the adoption of IoT for smart farming is actively growing.

$33.4 bn

the estimated value of IoT applications in the agriculture market in 2031

Verified Market Research

10.2%

the expected CAGR of the IoT in agriculture market growth from 2024 to 2031

Verified Market Research

> $8 bn

the estimated value of the agricultural IoT monitoring segment by 2033

Precedence Research

> $2.2 bn

the predicted value of the global agriculture drones market by 2033

Precedence Research

Scheme title: IoT in agriculture market share, by region
Data source: Precedence Research

Five agricultural IoT use cases

The Internet of Things can be applied to almost all aspects of farming, helping both large agriculture organizations and small farmers optimize agriculture operations and maximize crop and livestock output. Let’s explore the five ways of how IoT is making a difference in agriculture.

Precision farming & predictive analytics

IoT technology is an essential component of precision agriculture, a strategy involving the collection and analytics of farming information for more informed decisions about crop production optimization.

Farmers use smart IoT sensors to collect data on soil conditions, like moisture, nutrient levels, and pest infestations, as well as changes in humidity and temperature for further analysis. Predictive analytics solutions then process the collected data and help farmers make decisions about providing crops with treatment, pesticides, or additional irrigation. The analysis of IoT-generated data with artificial intelligence or machine learning algorithms can also provide insights into optimal soil fertilization strategies required for a particular type of crop, as well as suggest the best crop rotation strategies and predict the best planting and harvesting times.

Benefit

Optimized usage of resources, like water and fertilizers, improved crop management and reduced associated costs, as well as increased crop yield quality and quantity.

Agricultural drones

Agricultural drones are unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with multispectral sensors that help determine crop growth stages, crop health, arable lands, soil quality and variability. Drones fly over fields, collecting data on crop conditions and transmitting it to an IoT platform for analysis. Making such drones a part of their IoT network and using them for agricultural purposes, farmers ensure remote crop growth monitoring for optimized yield and crop production. In addition to crop monitoring, the usage of drones helps farmers control the proper distribution of pesticides, thus minimizing their environmental impact.

Benefit

Improved crop yield and a reduction in the environmental impact of farming practices.

Livestock monitoring

Application of IoT solutions has proved its efficiency for livestock management. Farmers apply IoT sensors in barns to measure the temperature and levels of humidity, CO2, ammonia, and light and adjust ventilation and lighting accordingly. For example, the sufficient level of light positively influences the livestock’s proper growth and feeding patterns, improves reproductive efficiency, and reduces stress.

Livestock location tracking is another area where IoT technology is actively applied. Farmers can observe their cattle’s location in real-time, minimizing the risk of animals getting lost.

IoT sensors are also used to monitor the health of honeybee colonies with real-time data collection on temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels and detection of early changes that may threaten the entire hive.

Benefit

Improved livestock health and conditions, resulting in greater and higher-quality production and improved profitability.

Automated greenhouses

The better the conditions inside greenhouses, the greater the harvest farmers will reap and the higher the crops’ quality will be. However, maintaining optimal greenhouse conditions manually is extremely demanding. Luckily, IoT can help farmers handle the majority of greenhouse maintenance tasks.

Farmers can apply IoT technology to monitor humidity, temperature, light levels, and ventilation inside greenhouses. IoT devices can not only continuously measure these parameters, but also adjust the level and the patterns of light and irrigation inside, as well as open or close the air ventilation systems to normalize the temperature and CO2 concentration.

In addition, IoT security systems, like smart CCTV cameras and alarms and access solutions, can help prevent theft and improve the safety of greenhouses’ harvest.

Benefit

Improved crop yield and quality due to the enablement of ideal microclimate conditions, as well as proper irrigation and fertilization inside greenhouses, with automation systems.

Smart irrigation

Optimizing plant irrigation helps significantly reduce water wastage, especially in regions where droughts are common or water resources are limited. Farmers can control their crop irrigation activities by implementing a variety of smart IoT-based sensors:

Soil moisture sensors monitor the presence of water in soil and transmit the data to the irrigation system for adjusting the precise amount of water delivered to plants with IoT-connected valves, helping reduce water wastage.
Drip irrigation systems optimize water flows to individual plants based on the moisture levels.
Water quality monitoring sensors test the quality of water used for irrigation and alert farmers in case of deviations that can negatively impact crop quality and yield.

Benefit

Increased sustainability due to optimized water consumption and improved crop yields due to optimal irrigation strategies.

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IoT in agriculture: real-life examples

Smart irrigation sensors from HydroPoint

A Californian-based company, HydroPoint, offers cost-effective smart solutions for intelligent irrigation and farming. HydroPoint uses real-time data from weather and soil moisture sensors to detect the need for irrigation and applies smart valves to optimize water usage, helping farmers reduce costs, minimize water wastage, and increase sustainability. HydroPoint also offers a data analytics platform that provides insights into water consumption and enables data-driven decision-making.

Fenceless farming solution from Nofence

Nofence, a Norwegian-based company, developed a smart solution that helps farmers control their cattle remotely and manage grazing without fencing. The solution uses GPS technology combined with special collars that remotely monitor the animals' activity and define where the animals can graze. Farmers create virtual pastures in their Nofence mobile apps, and a collar makes a specific sound when an animal gets close to the pasture border in the field. Overall, the solution allows farmers to ensure efficient rotational and mob grazing while minimizing the expenses on fencing.

Agricultural drones from DJI

DJI is a technology leader in unmanned aerial vehicles for photography and videography, offering a comprehensive precision agriculture solution consisting of agricultural drones and a connected web platform. Farmers can use DJI drones for efficient aerial irrigation and pesticide distribution that helps minimize water wastage, increase their farms’ sustainability by reducing the amount of pesticides, and optimize operational costs. DJI drones can also be applied to field scouting: using multispectral sensors, drones scan fields and transmit the data to the DJI web platform that further analyzes it and identifies terrain height differences, crop growth issues, and crop diseases.

Automated greenhouses from Orisha

Orisha, a Canadian-based company, developed a cost-effective solution for greenhouse automation that allows farmers to remotely manage their greenhouse operations. Orisha smartly integrates software and hardware components to enable intelligent farm management, including automated greenhouse ventilation, irrigation, heating, and wind protection that can be controlled remotely from a mobile application. The possibility to control greenhouse processes remotely is especially beneficial for those who practice subsistence farming. The solution helps farmers grow healthier and higher-quality products, minimize plant diseases and, as a result, maximize their greenhouse’s cost-efficiency.

Factors to consider when implementing agricultural IoT

Consideration	Solution
Connectivity & infrastructure	Fields and farms are often located in remote areas where there is limited or no high-speed internet connection, which complicates seamless IoT device communication and smooth data transmission. For some remote locations, maintaining a stable power connection is also a challenge due to limited electricity availability or risks of harsh weather conditions.	Although the resolution of the poor connectivity problem is ultimately the responsibility of government and tech leaders in the domain, there are some things that farmers themself can do to ensure better connectivity for their smart farming solutions. Agribusinesses can consider relying on long-range, wide-area network technologies that support long-range communication at a lower device power consumption (like LoRa, NB-IoT) or use satellite-based networks that can better support communication in rural areas. To minimize dependency of the IoT ecosystem on grid power, farmers can also use solar-powered IoT devices or even switch the entire farm over to renewable energy sources if they are available in the region.
Security	Data security is one of the main challenges of IoT solutions in all domains, including agriculture. IoT agricultural sensors, devices, and applications can be vulnerable to physical damage and cyberattacks, unauthorized access, as well as data breaches that lead to farming process disruptions and food safety risks or legal penalties.	To ensure the security of the farming data and the continuity of agricultural activities, we recommend opting for IoT software solutions that have such security features as multi-factor authentication and other access control mechanisms, as well as strong data encryption protocols. IoT devices and applications should also receive regular firmware and software updates from the provider to ensure they leverage the latest security patches.
Equipment & setup costs	The initial investment to implement IoT solutions in farming can be significant, since farmers most likely would need to buy and install hardware (sensors, actuators, smart devices) and implement an IoT platform and applications for managing the entire solution. In addition, supporting and maintaining the proper functioning of the agricultural IoT system will incur additional costs.	To ensure the success of IoT implementation, it’s imperative to accurately calculate all associated costs beforehand to mitigate the risk of unexpected expenses that can jeopardize the project. To minimize investments in IoT implementation, farmers can compare multiple IoT offerings on the market to choose the most cost-effective solution for their case. For mid to large agribusinesses, adopting a cloud-based IoT platform-as-a-service (like AWS IoT or Azure IoT) can provide the required scalability despite ongoing subscription costs. At the same time, small farmers can benefit from proprietary IoT devices that are often bundled with a dedicated platform for their management and offer a simpler setup with lower recurring costs. Over time, such benefits of IoT as improved farming efficiency, reduced resource wastage, and increased yields will ensure a positive return on investments.

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Revolutionize the future of agriculture with the Internet of Things

IoT technology plays an important role in optimizing agricultural practices, reducing costs, increasing the efficiency of farming operations, and improving yields. From precision farming and smart greenhouses to intelligent irrigation systems and unmanned drones, IoT helps farmers collect data in real time and make accurate data-driven forecasts and decisions that help improve output and increase sustainability.

Despite certain implementation challenges and high solution costs, IoT technology has enormous potential in transforming farming in the near future. If you are ready to embrace the future of smart agriculture, turn to our IoT experts for intelligent solutions that facilitate efficient and sustainable agriculture.

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