ICT makes our lives simple and convenient. With your smartphone, you can control the temperature and light of your home remotely. Using apps, you can find out where your bus is and when it will arrive. There are many other areas where ICT is increasingly being used such as education and health. Agriculture is no exception. Smart farming, which uses ICT in agriculture, includes things like drones, robots, and big data. It is revolutionizing how farmers do their jobs. Let's take a look at how technology is changing life on the farm.

Drones, small unmanned aerial vehicles, do many jobs on a farm. One of these is to survey fields. Survey drones have GPS-controlled autopilots that let them take off, fly their routes, and land by themselves. They are also equipped with many cameras that take pictures of the fields from the air. As the drones fly, they take pictures from different angles and with different lenses. The images are then analyzed to check for weed growth, ground moisture, and soil conditions. Especially, when drones take pictures with infrared lenses, which sense heat, they can see if plants are healthy or not - because healthy and unhealthy plants give off different amounts of heat. This information helps farmers take care of their crops better, thus increasing the quality and quantity of production.

An army of agribots, small autonomous robots designed for agricultural purposes, replaces human workers for a wide range of tasks. In general, agribots tend crops, and each of them is highly specialized for weeding, fertilizing, harvesting, or other farm work. Agribots have many benefits. For example, weeding robots can reduce the amount of pollution caused by herbicide use. Fertilizing robots can greatly reduce fertilizer costs by precisely applying the correct amount of fertilizer in the correct location. Using 3D imaging cameras, harvesting robots can pick fruits and vegetables without damaging them. Most importantly, agribots can operate 24/7, 365 days a year, solving the shortage of farm labor while increasing the speed and accuracy of the work.

Although agribots are widely used in all the important functions of farming, tractors are still needed for many large-scale and heavy-load tasks. Nowadays, they are evolving into self-driving vehicles. Smart tractors are equipped with GPS controls. They also have optimized route planning software which recommends the shortest route across the field. This can minimize soil erosion by ensuring that all farm tractors follow the same tracks. In addition, the self-driving tractors are accurate down to the millimeter. This means that they can plant seeds in the correct place and harvest crops with no unnecessary movements. Besides, they can reduce crop damage and other losses caused by human drivers going off track and into the crops. These smart, self-driving vehicles can also operate during low visibility conditions such as rain, dust, fog, and darkness.

Sensors attached to cows check their temperature, movement, behavior, and so on. When changes are observed, the sensors send a message to the farmer's phone or computer. For example, these sensors are being used to detect if an animal's back legs begin to lower, which is one of the first signs of illness. They can also sense if a cow is pregnant. This technology saves farmers dozens of hours a week that would otherwise be spent closely monitoring each cow. It also saves money for vets' bills by allowing farmers to deal with cows' illnesses before they get too serious. It goes without saying that using sensors to monitor the health of individual cows lets them live longer, healthier lives, and also improves milk production.

Smart farms take all the information from drones and animal sensors and collect it in the cloud. The information can be analyzed and then presented to farmers in a practical way. Based on the analyzed data, the farmers make informed decisions about an animal, a field, or the entire farm. The farmers' decisions are programmed into agribots and smart tractors immediately. The more data there are about conditions on the farm, the more accurate the decisions will be, making the farm more efficient and profitable. In a world with fewer food resources, but with more people to feed, ICT-based agriculture can help humankind address the challenges of the future. The amount of food produced can be maximized, while the impact on the environment can be minimized through the efficient use of people, equipment, and information. The future of agriculture depends on the smart use of ICT.