Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)

IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

A Study on IoT based Low-Cost Smart Kit

for Coconut Farm Management
Dr. S. Jaisankar Dr. P. Nalini
Department of Management Studies Department of Management Studies
Kumaraguru College of Technology Kumaraguru College of Technology
Coimbatore, India Coimbatore, India
e-mail: jaisankar@kctbs.ac.in e-mail: nalini@kctbs.ac.in

K. Krishna Rubigha
Research Scholar
Kumaraguru College of Technology
Coimbatore, India

Abstract—Affordability of smart devices by small farmers is the automobile, telecommunications sectors but not much are put
major reason for not using IoT devices in agricultural production in use in the agriculture sector. Many IoT based remote
and processes. S urvey results found that small farmers are facing control devices are developed for monitoring and controlling
problems in managing their farms due to various reasons The agricultural farmlands but only a very small percent of farmers
paper is a conceptual study that attempts to develop a novel low-
is using it in their farms. Dieisson, (2018) in his study
cost smart kit to solve the problems specific to coconut farm
owners. Installation of coco smart kit connected to a smartphone comments that the concept of smart farming is fast catching
will help the farmers to manage their farmland efficiently with the rapid developments in the internet of things (IoT) and
without any manpower resources. cloud computing but still there is a lot more to be done in
bringing technologies in agriculture. Ravi Gorli, (2018)
Keywords— Internet of Things; Coconut Farm management; predicts that the concept of smart farming is quickly catching
Small Farmers; Smart Kit in agricultural business. Crop control, on-time data collection,
and automated farming techniques have many advantages
networked farming. Use of sensor-based IoT devices
I. INT RODUCT ION communicates information on the changes happening in the
field to the farmer. Verónica Saiz-Rubio, (2019) states that
Internet of Things (IoT) plays an important role in almost all
sensors are usually integrated into a platform that is fixed to
sectors across the globe. IoT based devices are developed and
the ground within fields. These devices are to monitor crops
applied in manufacturing. healthcare, automobile,
and to obtain information from the farmland. Large farmers
telecommunications sectors but not much are put in use in the
can invest in equipment, facilities, and manpower but not in
agriculture sector. Many IoT based remote control devices are
case of small farmers. Food and Agriculture Organization of
developed for monitoring and controlling agricultural
the United Nations report states that agriculture is the largest
farmlands but only a very small percent of farmers is using it
source of livelihoods in India where 70 percent of the rural
in their farms. Efficient farming requires accurate information
households depend primarily on agriculture for their
at the right time. Farmers need time-critical information to
livelihood. The report also stated that 82 percent of farmers in
make decisions in changing farm conditions. Use of IoT based
India are operating in small and marginal scale owning a small
devices helps farmers to get the right information at the time
area of land. Affordability of smart devices by small farmers is
about the present condition of the farmland. The information
the major reason for not using IoT devices in agricultural
received farmers’ smartphone help farmers located at remote
production and processes . Muhammad Shoaib Farooq (2020)
in managing the resources efficiently that enables the yield
in his research finding, has stated that one of the issues for
more productive. Theodoros Lantzos, (2013) in his study
farmers not deploying IoT in agriculture is because of several
states that the use of the smart phone with specialized software
cost-related issues such as setup and running costs. The setup
installed is an ideal solution for various farm management
costs include hardware costs for IoT devices/sensors, base
processes. Remote farming also minimizes the cost of
station infrastructure, and gateways.
production by reducing the manpower required to perform the
This paper is a conceptual study that attempts to
task.
develop a novel low-cost smart kit to solve the problems faced
Internet of Things (IoT) plays an important role in
by the coconut farm owners with less than 5 acres of land.
almost all sectors across the globe. IoT based devices are
Installation of the coco smart kit connected to a smartphone
developed and applied in manufacturing. healthcare,

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
will help the farmers to manage their farmland efficiently
without any manpower resources.
II. NEED FOR T HE ST UDY
Majority of farmers in India are owning a small land and
operating in small-scale production of agricultural products.
Pollachi a small town located Coimbatore district in South
India is globally renowned for its coconut and coconut related
products. Coimbatore district has the highest land area for
coconut production when compared with other districts of the
state (Fig. 1.1).
Fig. 1.1 District-wise production of Coconuts in T amil Nadu
Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Govt. of India
The small farmers located here facing problems very
often affecting their livelihood. To identify the problems faced
by the farmers, a survey was conducted in rural areas of
Pollachi. It was found that farmers in this location were facing
problems in their farms due to the following major reasons
 The frequent intrusion of elephants in the fields
 Scarcity of water to supply to grow coconut trees
 Common pests attacking coconut trees
Fig. 1.2 & 1.3 shows snapshots of coconut farms damaged by
elephants in villages near Pollachi.
Fig. 1.2 Wild elephants damaged coconut trees at Sethumadai,
near Pollachi. Source: The Hindu News, 23, June 2019
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Fig. 1.3 Forest Department staff take stock of the damage caused
by the elephant at a coconut farm near Aliyar, Pollachi
Source: The Hindu News, 20, May 2019
III. REVIEW OF LIT ERAT URE
Agriculture took up the revolution with the alongside
Industries and made a phenomenal leap in increasing its
production by using new technology. But agriculture was not
able to cope with the continuous advancement of technology.
There is technology in the market, but the adoption of those
technologies is very minimum due to accessibility,
adaptability, and affordability. Here accessibility means the
awareness, education, and level of access farmers have about
the technology. Adaptability means the mindset of the
farmers to try and adapt the same for improving the
production and yield.
Ahmed (2013) explains that Indian agriculture is still
in its traditional fabric and adoption of innovative technology
can help India’s traditional agriculture become modern. Also,
the scale of land plays an important role in access and
adoption of technology. The annual report Ministry of Food
and Agriculture (2010) claims that small scale farmers are not
able to afford even fertilizers and agrochemicals due to
poverty and limited access to credit leading to low yield of
crops. This has become a cycle where low yield gives less or
no profit so that they are unable to invest in technology. This
cycle must be broken, and technology access and adoption
have to be increased to improve the yield and production. In
another study, Masood et al. (2012) suggest that technology
transfer can bridge the gap of awareness and adoption. From
time to time, farmers are aware are about the new technolo gy
in the market. But adoption requires a serious mindset change
both emotionally and mentally to adopt the new technology.
Governmental, non-governmental, and extension facilities
should work towards achieving the transfer the technology to
the farmers at full scale. Minde, (2008) argues that to address
the land, access to technology, and supply constraints many
African governments have introduced many small forms of
smart subsidies targeting specific farmers. In Ethiopia, life
cycle effects are one of the important factors for the adoption
of technology. Shibusawa, (2002) emphasis the need for
precision farming that should imply a management strategy to
increase productivity and economic returns by considering the
variability within and between fields.
Kijima et al., (2011) states that a key impact factor
for sustained adoption is the profitability of the agriculture
business overall. There may be cases of initial adoption and
abandonment of the technology at a later stage citing the low
profits from the business. Oster and Thorton (2009) suggest
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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
that poverty and price volatility of agricultural produces, in
general, are impacting the shift towards technolog y. The
above factors discuss the factors affecting and impacting the
adoption of technology in farming and further in the review it
was observed that what are all the different technologies
prevalent and how they can be taken to the farmers. The
technology has advanced the manual operated to auto-pilot
tractors, crop sensors, temperature sensors, and humidity
sensors. Today, the Internet of Things is running the world
and it has affected the agricultural practices to a great extent.
A new branch called Smart Farming has emerged with the
application of Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) in the farming practices. The third green revolution is
focused on ICT after the plant breeding and genetic
revolution. Smart Farming majorly includes Precision
equipment, IoT actuators, GPS, Big Data, Artificial
Intelligence, Machine Learning, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(Drones), Robotics, etc. Saiz-Rubio & Rovira-Más (2020)
confirmed that consistent knowledge about farms leads to
optimal decisions. Agricultural management systems can
handle farm data in such a way that the outcome could be
different for each farm.
The following are some of the important examples of
the impact of technology in agriculture. John Deere, one of the
famous farming equipment manufacturers is pioneering in
auto-pilot or autonomous pilots like self-driving or
autonomous cars. The tractors are connected to the Internet
and in real-time, the crop data can be monitored. Sensors in
the fields help the farmers gain access to the topography of the
field and variables such as acidity and temperature of the soil.
Everything is available at the touch of a click of our
fingerprints. Smartphones enable the farmers to access data
remotely about their equipment, crops, and livestock and get
statistics about the same. They can even statistical predictions
and use predictive analytics to forecast weather and decision
making.
Bhar L M et al., (2019) emphasis that AI requires a
continuous and vast amount of data for the accurate and
seamless performance of the data systems. This involves
including the historical data and improving the prediction
system. This enables the agricultural management systems to
provide customized solutions to individual farms on a crop-to-
crop basis. Nayyar and Puri (2017) proposed an agriculture
stick having a system of breadboard, sensors, and live data
feed integrating Arudino Technology. On putting in practice
the system predicted 98% accurately the data needed for
informing the farmers about the field conditions and planning
the decisions accordingly.
The devices to include in the smart kit was decided based
on the recommendations made by the researchers of previous
studies and hearing the voice of the farmers. Jennifer, Raj and
Vijitha (2019) in their study explained that IoT enabled
Greenhouses can maintain the temperature in minuscule level
with greater precision and accuracy. The monitoring and
controlling of the parameters and maintaining the required
climatic conditions. The researchers proposed the use of
Netduino 3 as the IoT platform and sensors for monitoring
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moisture, temperature, sunlight, and humidity. This especially
is helpful for farmers with limited or no knowledge of
maintaining the planned climatic conditions. Muthunoori and
Munaswamy (2019) identified the potential for artificial
intelligence in agriculture is envisioning at the soil and crop
monitoring, weather forecasting, predictive agricultural
analytics, markets and supply chain efficiency. Moving a step
forward, Baskar D A (2020) in his study concluded that the
internet of things that can involve billions of devices that
range from large scale to small scale. The rapid progress in the
technologies cause huge growth in the devices that are
connected by the IoT, and in turn, increases the energy
consumption. Muhammad Shoaib Farooq (2020), based on the
extensive reviews of literature has given a major classification
of application of devices (in percentage) are Irrigation
Monitoring and Controlling (16%), Precision Farming (16%),
Soil Monitoring (13%), Temperature Monitoring (12%),
Humidity Monitoring (11%), Animal Monitoring and
Tracking (11%), Water Monitoring and Controlling (7%),
Disease Monitoring (5%), Air Monitoring and Fertilization
Monitoring (4%).
There are many other technologies, platforms, and mobile
applications providing a real-time solution to farming hurdles.
But again, the constraint is the size of the land that determines
the adoption and usage. Almost all technologies are designed
to serve the big farmers with larger pieces of land. This study
attempts to bridge the gap and provide a sensible, affordable,
and useful application to farmers.
IV. RESEARCH PROCESS
A. Research Gap
From the previous review papers, several authors stated that there
are several technologies with the use of Information and
Communication Technologies are developed for agriculture to get
maximum yield and minimize the manpower. There are no attempt s
made to develop a low-cost kit affordable by the small farmer
addressing to solve the problems faced by farmers focusing on
coconut farming. This study addresses the issues faced by small
coconut small farmers to find ways how to manage the small farms
by the implementation of IoT devices in rural farmlands.
B. Objectives
This study attempt to develop a conceptual low-cost smart
kit model for the small farmers those who own coconut farms
less than 5 acres of land. The objective of the study was to
develop a customized IoT based low-cost smart kit to address
these problems. The kit will contain four important devices
that considered essential to manage a small coconut farm.
Installation of the smart kit connected with a smartphone
farmer can manage their farm efficiently without any
manpower resources.
C. Research Methodology
The research method adopted is qualitative research. The
sampling method used was snowball sampling. An intensive
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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0

interview process was carried out with a help of a semi- VI. W ORKING PRINCIPLE
structured questionnaire to the small farmers with less than 5 The smart kit contains four application devices such
acres in the rural areas of Pollachi located in Coimbatore as Fence alarm, Moisture sensor, Pest sensor and Water valve
district, South India. Initially, two farmers were approached to control are installed in the appropriate locations in the coconut
collect the information and followed by referrals another farmland. The fence alarm detects any object passing through
fourteen farmers were interviewed. Sixteen farm owners were the fence and the sensor will detect it and send the signal to
interviewed. the farmer. Whenever the water content level in this soil
decreases from the set level, the moisture sensor unit will
D. Problem Statement
detect it and sends the information to the farmer. Coconut
From the interview process, it was found that there are not
trees are bound to various types of pests. The sensor detects
many technologies were used in the farming processes due to
the presence and the movement of the pests and sends the
lack of awareness among farmers about the sensing devices
signal to the farmer. Whenever the soil moisture goes below
used in the farm management. There was no technology used
the required level, the farmer can switch-on the pump to
for security system and for controlling the motor and water
discharge water and controls the level of water flow based on
valves. Based on the outcome of the survey, it was found that
the water availability. The signals are routed through a
the major problems faced by the local farmers in this area
were,
 Safeguarding the coconut trees from wild animals
 Distribution of available water covering the fields
 Preventing the pests from coconut trees

V. LOW -COST COCO SMART KIT

To implement a low-cost smart kit for the small farmers
those who own coconut farmland. Farmers install this Low-
cost Coco Smart Kit for managing their farm from remote.
The smart kit consists of IoT devices viz., 1. Fence alarm, 2.
Flow control valve, 3. Soil moisture monitoring device and 4.
Pest alarm. These IoT devices will help to reduce the problems Fig. 1.4 Working of Smart Kit – Information to the farmer
of the farmers and helps to produce more yield. Table 1 shows
the benefits of each device. wireless GSM Module (Fig. 1.4). The GSM module is a chip
that is used to connect and send the communication between
TABLE I. List of devices and its benefit the mobile phone and the GSM System. All the signals are
Device Application Working Benefits routed through the cloud, a virtual space that connects the
M inimizes the farmer located in a remote place. The SAAS layer web-based
Sends a signal to platform accessible from everywhere and preferably on any
damage of farm
Fence the farmer when
Farm Security crops from device is proposed to put in use. Based on the information
Alarm an object crosses
elephants and received from the sensing devices the farmer will understand
the fence
animals
the current condition in the farmland and reacts to it. The
Controls and farmer will operate the devices and controls it using a mobile
Flow Optimum use of
Water distributes water phone with a web-based app installed on the mobile phone.
control water resource
M anagement flow at the point Information and data are stored in virtual servers which are
valve and saves water
of requirement maintained by a cloud computing service provider. The farmer
Senses the can also store and access data by using personal cloud
moisture level of
Soil Enhances the computing on the cloud using an internet connection.
Soil M oisture the soil
M oisture growth of the
Control (ph/acidity, light)
device plant/yield TABLE 2 Cost of Devices
and send a signal
to the farmer
Creates noise No. Device Unit Price Units Amount
Prevents ($) ($)
when something
coconut farms 1 Fence Alarm 8.5 3 25.5
Pest crosses in the
from pests and 2 M oisture sensor 5.0 2 10.0
Alarm Pest Control sensor and send a
increases
signal to the 3 Pest sensor 4.5 4 18.0
productivity
farmer 4 Valve Control 15.0 1 15.0
5 GSM M odule 45.0 1 45.0
Total 113.5

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 Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC)
IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP20OSV-ART; ISBN: 978-1-7281-5464-0
The cost of the sensing devices and control valve that
comprises the coco smart kit is listed in Table 2. The number
of units of device required arrived for less than 5 acres of land.
The total cost of the Coco-Smart kit is $ 113.5 (Rs.8,000/-
Indian Rupees) is a one-time investment for the farmer. The
GSM module is a part of the kit included in the kit. A
smartphone is not included or an optional one as most of the
farmers already owns it for their personal use. There are many
mobile apps are offered free of cost that could be installed in
the mobile device.
VII. CONCLUSION
From the study, it was found evidence that the small-
sized coconut farmers are facing problems in managing their
farmland. The problem could be the same for most of the
small farmers in rural India. The problems are largely due to
shortage of manpower, water scarcity and a threat from wild
animals. To overcome these problems faced by the farmers,
the adoption of these smart devices is the only solution to
manage the coconut farmlands efficiently. A coco smart kit is
a novel approach in a way it is designed to solve the specific
problems faced by coconut small farms from the damage of farm
crops from wild animals, save water by regulating the water
discharge, and prevent coconut trees from pests . Further,
addressing these problems is possible to make the kit at low
cost which is affordable by the small farmers. The smart kit
proposed is limited to coconut farms and can be implemented
to other farmlands with modifications or replacement of
sensor devices as per the crops cultivated. Finally, it is
suggested that the installation of the sensor devices in critical
areas of the farmland that would help the small farmers to
manage the farms efficiently with a significant increase in
yield of coconuts.
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