Low-cost Technological Strategies for Smallholders Sustainability: A Review

Abstract

Facing the challenges of the 21st century, into the agricultural sector have been designing strategies focused on the management of ecosystem resources, risk management associated with crops and the promotion of sustainable growth of agricultural communities. These strategies have been configured considering functional and competitive levels for open agricultural production systems, and usually based on low-cost technologies such that Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT), Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), Cloud Computing, and Computational Algorithms. This approach allows the configuration, planning, and implementation of technological strategies for the agricultural sector, impacting in a positive way, generating higher production levels and intensive production cycles to strengthen the smallholder farmers.

Utilization of Internet of Things and Wireless Sensor Networks for Sustainable Smallholder Agriculture

“…Weak land management practices [32], the volume of family labor [33] and uninformed use of farm inputs are also factors that contribute to poor farm productivity. The low productivity is also often exacerbated by crop disease and pests [34,35]. In addition to the inculcated effect of the above factors, scarce research and development activities and lack of accurate and timely information negatively impact farm yields [36,37].…”

The Role of Low-Cost Digital Solutions in Supporting Industrial Sustainability

“…In the agricultural sector, low-cost technology has been studied for natural resource management to reduce excessive water use [21,22]. Challenges such as energy restriction, connectivity issues, limited computing capacity, small available memory, and data security were noted as restrictions that need to be further addressed [21]. Within the textile industry, low-cost solutions have been used for waste management strategies, specifically addressing smart textile waste collection [23].…”

Evolution of scientific knowledge on the internet of things and smart homes

“…The IoT technologies are embedded in virtually every sphere of society: agriculture (Tzounis et al, 2018;Cornejo-Velazquez et al, 2020), smart environments like homes and offices (Balo et al, 2016), logistics, transportation and healthcare (Atakul, 2015). Aspects such as security, privacy, data management and interoperability are also points of high criticality when if it aims to interconnect different hardware and software devices (Tsai et al, 2014;Patel & Patel, 2016).…”