Smart Irrigation System for Crop Farmers in Namibia

Abstract

Farmers in Namibia currently operate their irrigation systems manually, and this seems to increase labor and regular attention, especially for large farms. With technological advancements, the use of automated irrigation could allow farmers to manage irrigation based on a certain crops' water requirements. This chapter looks at the design and development of a smart irrigation system using IoT. The conceptual design of the system contains monitoring stations placed across the field, equipped with soil moisture sensors and water pumps to maintain the adequate moisture level in the soil for the particular crop being farmed. The design is implemented using an Arduino microcontroller connected to a soil moisture sensor, a relay to control the water pump, as well as a GSM module to send data to a remote server. The remote server is used to represent data on the level of moisture in the soil to the farmers, based on the readings from the monitoring station.