The Application of the Internet of Things in Soil Monitoring

The global population is expected to approach 10 billion by 2025. According to the United Nations, global agriculture needs to increase by at least 60% to ensure food security. However, soil monitoring has lacked high-precision and low-cost real-time field data, which has become a major challenge for increasing agricultural production. In response to this issue, this article reviews and summarizes four applications that solve soil monitoring problems through Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The combination of the IoT and 3D printing technology makes multi-point monitoring feasible. The combination of the Internet of Things and drones can solve the problem of power supply for traditional sensors. The Internet of Things, combined with fuzzy logic controllers, transforms sensor data into soil health grades and fertilization suggestions. The Internet of Things combined with machine learning recommends crops. There are still bottlenecks. For instance, in extreme environments such as cold regions and coastal salt fields, sensors are prone to accuracy drift. In the future, solutions need to be made based on these issues. Efforts should be made to promote the integration of "sensors - satellites - models" to make the technology accessible to farmers. This review provides easier, cheaper and more efficient technical solutions for enhancing agricultural efficiency and ensuring food security, and has significant reference value both in theory and practical application.