Chapters authored
Organic Farming for Sustainable Agriculture Using Water and Soil Nutrients
The agricultural community/farmers are struggling to obtain higher rate of yield due to lack of poor knowledge about the soil and water nutrients and suitability of the organic crop for the soil. Most of the farmers use excessive chemical fertilizers in-order to increase productivity of their yield, without aware of side effects. The excess usage of chemical fertilizers by the farmers will have impact on the quality, fertility, and salinity of the soil. To overcome these issues and to promote Digital Agriculture concept we propose an IoT enabled sensor system for monitoring soil nutrient [NPK] and pH of irrigation water to reduce the manual laboratory method of testing and get the results via mobile application and to promote organic farming in the agricultural field. Smart organic farming based mobile application will further process these nutrients value to predict and suggests the suitable crop to grow and the usage of appropriate amount of fertilizer to maintain the soil fertility there by achieving optimum usage of chemical fertilizer because continuous and wrong usage of these chemical fertilizer have a harmful effect not only on soil but also on crops, we consume leading to unhealthy human life. The proposed mobile application also helps in establishing the connection between farmers and Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) in order to avoid fragmentation of profit shares and attain Pricing uncertainty and marketing of the yields by avoiding the middle man. APMC is a state government body which ensures safeguard to the farmers from exploitation by large retailers and suggest the kind of crop to be grown with organic farming. India is well known to produce organic fertilizer which is produced by the waste of slaughterhouses, plant and animal residues, biological products and other natural resources. Thus, the proposed work helps the farmers in adopting stress-free organic farming practice by self-testing their field soil parameters for generating quick soil analysis reports and also helps in connecting with APMC to know the suitable crop for their agriculture land based on the soil and water analysis (SWA) report, dispensing the required amount of organic fertilizer to the soil based on soil and water nutrients analysis using IoT enabled sensor, funding/insurance to the crops in case of occurrence of unpredictable natural disaster in future and direct marketing facility without middle man and maintain sustainable agriculture. In the present era, the industry is at 5.0 levels but agricultural production is still at 2.0 levels. In this chapter a methodology for sustainable agriculture and increase the organic yield of the organic farming using the mobile and IoT technological approaches is presented. A former can obtain the advice and other information for growing the organic crop, organic certification, pricing for the organic yield, selling and other activities by using mobile application in his/her local language. By the proposed work with the ease of mobile application the farmers can perform self-test of their field parameters for generating quick soil and water analysis report, predicts and suggest the suitable organic crop, obtaining the suitable pricing by the APMC and organic certification and agreement to meet the sustainable agriculture. Further the soil fertility of the organic farm can be monitored using IoT enabled sensors which are remotely connected with the mobile application. The experimentation is performed at different agriculture fields with organic farming at six geographical separated villages at Bagalkot district of Karnataka state, India. The different agricultural lands with variety of soil samples is tested to measure the soil parameter such as moisture, temperature, humidity and NPK nutrient values. The pH value of the irrigation water is also determined including borewell, pond, rain, river water etc. available in the reservoirs and promising sustainability in the organic yield is obtained.
Part of the book: New Generation of Organic Fertilizers