Application of Internet of Things in Urban Farms

Both the urban farm and the Internet of Things can be said to complement each other. Urban farms have accelerated the transparency, transfer, and reuse of information because of the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Things has made urban farms more accessible. For urban farms that emphasize safety and reduce exploitation, if they can use the Internet of Things to assist in production, circulation, sales, and promotion, they can achieve the goal of rebuilding people-to-people, things, and urban food networks, allowing cities and agriculture to Organic fusion.

The urban farm “Urban Farm” or “Urban Agriculture”, a term not commonly heard in Taiwan, has been promoted and implemented in many countries for many years. Urban farms can be simply defined as agricultural activities within or outside the city, including activities such as crop production, animal care, processing, and circulation. Its biggest difference from traditional agricultural agriculture is the highly integrated economic activities of the city. For example, it uses urban organic waste as compost, and it uses urban wastewater for irrigation. It directly relates to people living in the city, and hits the food supply chain and land. The utilization and competition, and being influenced by urban policies and plans at any time, are an integral part of the entire city's activities; in the future, we will see more and more buildings integrating life, work, greening and production like in Figure 1. Occurred in the city.

When people begin to realize that agriculture is no longer simply producing food but also includes environmental protection, ecological balance and health and safety, agriculture will bring strength and dignity to people; because it can ensure the safety of food and the environment, it is worth being your own. The contribution of families, communities and communities, especially urban farms, is an inevitable trend.

The concept of urban farm first came from the idea of ​​Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). This idea originated in Germany, Switzerland and Japan in the 1960s. It was concerned with food security and urbanization of agricultural land. According to co-chair Elizabeth of the United States National Sustainable Agriculture Movement. Ms. Elizabeth Henderson explained: “The essence of community-supported agriculture is the interaction of people and land with the region. Land production feeds people, and people protect land as a reward, and share risks and enjoy production compensation. That is, Farming and production are no longer farmers (producers), but they are closely linked with people who consume food. We share the harvest and take risks (Ref. 2).

The mad cow disease in the United Kingdom in 1996, bird flu in Hong Kong in 1997, swine encephalitis in Southeast Asia in 1998, the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Europe in 2001, the SARS in Japan and the O-157 incident in Japan, and snow milk milk incident in 2003 have had an important impact on countries. It also affects international trade. Others such as: heavy metals, pesticides, fertilizers and other residues in the plant, antibiotics, hormones and other residues in poultry, livestock, aquatic products, improper control of pathogenic microorganisms in the food processing and storage process, the use of inferior raw materials in the food processing process, with disease and death Processing of cooked meat products from livestock and poultry, processing of deep-fried foods using oil in the pot, etc., improper use of additives in food processing, such as adding brighteners to flour, steamed buns, steamed buns, using mineral oil as brightener or improper use of additives, such as : Excessive use of benzoic acid in salted products, excessive use of artificial sweeteners in beverages, and improper use of raw materials, such as genetically modified products that cause controversy, have made global food safety a red light. As a result, there has been a surge of international food safety controls. Trends.

The pursuit of high quality and safe food is the basic appeal of human nature. How producers highlight their products to meet the needs of consumers is only the first step in marketing. Therefore, the main purpose of all countries to actively promote the traceability system of agricultural products and foods is to increase the safety of agricultural products and foodstuffs so as to strengthen consumer confidence in agricultural, fishery and animal husbandry products, especially in terms of the quality and safety of fresh foods. . Through the participation of urban farm mechanisms and communities, farmers and community participants are familiar with each other and have the opportunity to directly participate in agricultural affairs, jointly supervise and assist the farmers' agricultural operations, and directly ensure the safety of food.

The urban farm has become one of the strategies for urban development. It is not only a green indicator of the city, but also links the most vulnerable production and consumption. Regardless of its socioeconomic position, it has the ability and the pipeline to enjoy good food. Community-supported agriculture will consider the different cultures, tastes, imaginations, economic conditions, and natural conditions of each community, and develop ways to connect producers, sellers, and consumers to the community. Overall, it is to solve the problem of the producers. Level of exploitation, food safety concerns, and sustainability of the environment.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and the urban farm Internet of Things (IOT) were proposed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in 2005 and pointed out that apart from people and people being able to communicate with each other through the Internet, people and goods Or information can also be exchanged between the item and the item (Ref. 3). The architecture of the Internet of Things can be divided into three dimensions: Time, Place, and Thing, creating an environment in which all items can communicate with each other at any time and place. For urban farms that emphasize safety and reduce exploitation, if the Internet of Things can be used to assist in production, circulation, sales, and promotion, the relationship between people, people and things, and the urban food network can be reconstructed for urban and agricultural development. Organic fusion. Achieving traceability, transparency, standardization and standardization of the production and distribution process (four modernizations), safety of the consumers and consumers buying food and food (two security), two security and four modernization can be said to be the application of the Internet of Things The ultimate mission of the urban farm.

To achieve this mission, the Internet of Things requires four core technologies, including:

1. Radio-frequency identification (RFID) - used for identification of individual agricultural products, production units or community personnel and production and sales records.

2. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) - Combines sensors and wireless networks to provide production and distribution environment data such as temperature, humidity, light quantity, and images. This information allows consumers to understand the complete changes from the field to the table, so that producers can analyze and improve production methods.

3, mobile technology - in order to meet the pace of urban life, so that information can communicate with each other at any time and any place, it needs mobile technology, such as mobile phones, tablet computers, etc. Now these have been equipped with mobile network communication and information processing and analysis capabilities .

4, miniaturization technology - In order to allow the entire process to be silent and automatic and convenient operation, sensors, RFID, mobile devices, etc., need to cooperate with the size reduction or miniaturization.

The overall operational structure of the Internet of Things applied to urban farms is shown in Figure 3. RFID technology is used to calibrate individual items (which can be farms, crops, livestock, processed products, etc.) and record item history information at the stages of production, distribution, and sales. Collect the environmental conditions of the entire life cycle of an item and store the data in a cloud database through a wireless network. The analysis of these data can help producers quickly and correctly know the environment of the farm and the status of the production objects, help to establish effective production and operation planning, and enable consumers to quickly know where and how the goods are produced through the Internet or mobile devices. Information can be purchased and eaten with peace of mind; food safety issues can be traced back to the root cause of the problem when they occur. Finally, concatenation and diffusion marketing can be conducted in conjunction with social networks. The greatest significance of these information is not to educate the public to produce knowledge, but to allow consumers to feel the responsible attitude of the producers and complete the mission of "two security" and "four modernizations."

Application issues Both urban farms and the Internet of Things can be said to complement each other. The urban farms have facilitated the transparency, circulation, and reuse of information because of the Internet of Things. The Internet of Things has made urban farms more accessible. Many previous studies and reports have also mentioned the application of IoT in agriculture, but most of them refer to the traditional agricultural production environment. The first thing to face is the two major problems of the Internet and electricity; but when the environment changes to Chengdu, On the farm, if the above two issues do not exist, then we can focus on the joint issues of the Internet of Things and think about how we can make information links more complete, faster, more extensive, and effective reuse.

However, if the Internet of Things is to be applied to urban farms, there are still several bottlenecks to be overcome, including:

1. Cannot guarantee 100% identification - The Internet of Things mainly uses RFID technology to identify individual items, but the RF signal is easily disturbed by the environment containing metal and moisture (the farm environment in particular), especially in the UHF bands. The actual application effect is always less than the expected automation, which hinders the popularization of the application and leads to high equipment costs. This part still needs to be broken through and overcome in the hardware technology.

2. The cost of construction is high—because 100% identification cannot be guaranteed and the popularity is poor, the prices of related equipment and systems are still high at this stage, and most of the applications still remain in the laboratory stage and the nature of the plan.

3. Great changes in environmental conditions - The agricultural environment is often an environment with large changes in temperature and humidity. How to ensure that the system can be used in such a harsh environment for a long time is a big problem, resulting in an excessively high rate of customization.

4. Standards have not yet been fully unified - To apply the Internet of Things technology to the production and circulation tracking of agricultural products, some of the technical standards have not yet been fully confirmed and there are still problems with integration in use.

5, the use of the majority need to add sensors - the majority of agricultural applications need to integrate with the sensor, the biggest problem is still the size and accuracy of the sensor, how to effectively transmit the signal, the service life and other issues.

6, size and placement methods - agriculture needs to face a lot of living organisms, such as pigs or sea otters and other organisms, how to mark RFID tags in these living organisms are still in the research stage. All these living entities will be active and growing. How to effectively identify, track and record data through the Internet of Things technology remains to be studied and breakthroughs.

7. Frequencies - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tests using a UHF reader to continuously read a vial filled with insulin for 1 hour and found that the temperature has increased by 1°C. . Such an experiment has no conclusion but a statement of fact. Just like everyone has discussed and debated the big brother electromagnetic wave, is there any harm in the end? There is no conclusion yet. However, the majority of agricultural applications are living environments. Does RFID have any impact on these living organisms? Still need to be confirmed by further experiments.

Future Prospects and Conclusions The application of Internet of Things on urban farms can strengthen the supply chain management, effectively improve the efficiency of logistics management, and help agricultural transformation and development of agricultural brands. For example, if you promote the production and sales of agricultural products, if you improve the introduction of the Internet of Things, besides saving human resources and improving efficiency, the complete individual record may also be used to ensure the safety of agricultural products and help establish modern urban farms.

However, there are still some obstacles to the application of IoT to urban farms, including high costs, high initial investment costs, 100% RF technology identification, technical standards not yet unified, and equipment and data management issues. These problems make the current application still remain in the demonstration stage of the project and have not yet been truly introduced into practical operation applications. However, with the advancement of technology and standards and awareness of environmental protection, the future implementation of the Internet of Things on urban farms is just around the corner.