Applications of Cloud Computing for

Agriculture Sector

Swathi R ,Manasa V

Information science and engineering

Channabasaveshwara institute of technology

Gubbi,Tumkur

Abstract-With the growing population and the

ever growing demand for food, the scientists and

researchers across the globe are busy trying to

find innovative ways to meet these ever surging

demands. The role of Information

Communication Technology (ICT) has always

been extremely crucial for the agriculture sector

owing to the highly unpredictable nature of the

later. With the evolution of Cloud Computing

and its subsequent popularity, the service

providers are coming up with very essay and

affordable solutions for the end users. This

upcoming technology is predicted to bring

revolutionary changes to the agriculture sector.

This article is based on the description of cloud

computing technology and its numerous

benefits. Furthermore, this paper also highlights

how effectively it can contribute to the

agricultural sector.

Keywords: Agriculture, Cloud Computing,Tools

I. INTRODUCTION

Information and communication have

always been an indispensible part of

human race. Ever since people learned to

grow crops, harvested them and sell them

to market, they have sought information

from each other to make the maximum

profit. Even though the farmers have

grown the same crop for centuries, the ever

changing weather conditions, soil fertility,

pests and diseases etc. affects the final

outcome. The latest information allows the

farmers to deal with these changes

smoothly. However, providing such

crucial and timely knowledge is a

challenge in itself owing to the highly

localized nature of agriculture. In past few

years, Information Technologies and tools

are being implemented in the agricultural

sector to cater to these information needs.

However, the initial expenditure for setting

up the ICT infrastructure and its

subsequent maintenance is one of the

primary drawbacks. As a result, the biggest

apprehension for the information

technologist is to find a user friendly,

reliable and at the same time cheaper ICT

.This paper highlights such an application

of ICT which will cater to all such

information needs of an Indian farmer at a

very reasonable and affordable cost. That

latest and most promising area of ICT is

Cloud Computing. It enables the users to

make use of various services and tools

with pay-per use basis without the need to

know the physical location and

configuration of the system that delivers

the services.

II.BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Cloud computing is regarded as a

technology which makes available the IT

allied services in a very simple and user

friendly manner at an affordable cost. The

term “cloud computing” refers to the fact

that users do not really need to know who

is providing those services and the cloud hid all the technicalities from them. The

beauty of cloud computing lies in the fact

that the services can be availed whenever

and wherever needed and the users have to

pay for as much as they use, just like any

utility bills. At the same time, it also offers

participation of less manpower and zero

maintenance of those services.

According to the Cloud Security Alliance

and NIST guidelines for cloud computing,

it has four different deployment models

namely private, community, public and

hybrid. Beside this, based on user

requirement, cloud computing offers the

following basic models to deliver the

services.

• Software as a Service (SaaS):

This model offers ICT tools such as

software, web applications etc., without

the need to buy and install them in specific

machines. Another promising feature of

this model is that the users are billed as per

the uses basis, unlike the traditional way

of paying for the software to purchase it.

• Platform as a Service (PaaS): In

this particular model the end-users are

offered the computing platform for

designing and developing specific

applications without the need to buy the

license or the product. PaaS also takes care

of hosting those applications without much

concern about hardware and data storage

requirement. It also guarantees the

availability of the platforms and their

security.

• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):

This form of cloud computing usually

includes components that are used in

availing ICT services, such as virtual

computers, datacenters, traffic monitoring

and redirecting, basic network components

etc. This is the most outstanding benefit of

cloud computing as the organizations

invest the most in establishing the

infrastructure.

Fig. 1: Cloud computing framework

[NIST]

These delivery models form the core of the

cloud and they exhibit certain characteristics

like on demand self-service, broad network

access, resource pooling, measured service and

rapid elasticity. This description of cloud

computing framework can be depicted in the

Fig.1 given above.

ICT in Agriculture: Indian Landscape

Indian agriculture sector has gained

momentum since the inception of the

numerous ICT projects. However due to

lack of factors like poor internet

connectivity in remote areas, lack of IT

infrastructure and poor knowledge and

awareness about these Government

initiatives, the full potential of these

projects is yet to be achived.

III. CURRENT CHALLENGES IN

INDIAN AGRICULTURE

In spite of the above mentioned numerous

ICT projects in India, the country is still

facing several challenges:

• Poor knowledge about the weather

forecast, pests and diseases.

• Deficient production information

• Not enough sales and distribution

information

• Inadequate information about

consumption trends

• Insufficient power availability in

rural areas

• Poor ICT infrastructure and ICT

illiteracy

• Non availability of timely and

relevant content, non-integration of

services, poor advisory services and lack

of localization, and in particular non

availability of agricultural information

kiosks/ knowledge centers at the grass root

level.

• Lack of awareness among farmers

about the benefits of ICT in agriculture.

IV. ROLE OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN

SOLVING THESE CHALLENGES

Looking at the potential benefits of cloud

computing we can list out its role in

agricultural development in India. Using

the applications of cloud the farmers have

nothing to worry about hardware and

software investment and also the technical

knowledge required to learn them. The

farmers will send the request for the

specific cloud service using a user friendly

device, and the cloud service provider will

analyze and handle the request

dynamically, and finally the results will be

passed back to the client. They can get

most up-to-date farming and propagation

techniques, pest control knowledge, and

can also track and check the whole process from production, distribution to consumption. They can also leverage the systematic

methods in information collection, supply

chain logistics, market forecasting and

business decision-making.

V. CLOUD COMPUTING

IMPLEMENTATION WILL PLAY THE

FOLLOWING ROLE:

• Less or no expenditure on setting

up IT infrastructure as these can be

acquired from the cloud service providers

on pay per use basis. For example,

Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be used

to acquire Widows or Linux Server by

simply specifying how much processor

and storage capacity is needed over the

internet at a very reasonable price.

• On-Demand opportunities for data

sharing, data collection and aggregation

process which is very crucial for

agricultural research and development.

• Rapidly provisioned and released

feature allows for the efficient use of

agricultural resources.

• Cloud Computing elasticity makes

it to process very large database easily

which in turn can make the efficient

supply chain management of agricultural

products

• Measured Service would make it

possible for the farmers to use the cloud

services just like any other utility. They

just need to pay for what they have used.

• Efficient Agricultural Knowledge

Management: With the help of mobile

phone applications farmers can instantly

contribute to the knowledge database by

uploading the crop and soil related

pictures, videos and any other important

information.

• Software-as-a-Service model of

cloud computing provides software tools

without installation on machines which

require capital investment. Since most

farmers are not IT experts it makes them

easier to learn quickly and easily.

VI. APPLICATIONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING

The challenges of inadequate knowledge is

mostly due the lack of proper mechanisms

to share the knowledge .The farmers or the

people who have certain information about

pests or diseases or any useful information

are unable to share and propagate with

other people who require it. If the proper

knowledge sharing mechanism is at place

then most of the above stated challenges

can be solved. The cloud can offer a

centralized knowledge bank which can be

used to store all the agriculture related

information. This information bank will be

available to the farmers and other users

from agriculture sector at anyplace and at

anytime at a very reasonable cost. For

example the database for weather related

information stores the region specific

weather information and also the weather

forecast for a specific time period. It will

help the farmers in making appropriate

plans and then take decisions accordingly.

Another application of cloud computing

can be the database for the crop related

information, which stores information

associated with all the possible crops

grown in a particular region and at a

particular season which will help the

farmers of in crop related decision making.

Another significant application can be ask

the expert database which will provide

solutions to common problems that

farmers frequently face. Farmers can also

post their problems seeking for solutions

from the experts. It will also have an

extensive set of frequently asked questions

(FAQs) and their answers to make the

response reach the farmers faster.

Following are some of the possible

database solutions which can be offered as

a service by cloud service providers to the

farmers.

• Store and maintain a database for

the information generated in daily

activities:

• Weather prediction and related

database:

• Database for crop related

information

• Database for market related

information

• Database for production related

data

• Database for agricultural tools

related information

Based on the above applications of

cloud computing,the structure of the

Cloud computing based agricultural

system is depicted in the Fig. 2.

Fig. 2: Cloud based agricultural system

VII. ISSUES WITH CLOUD

COMPUTING

While the Cloud promises several benefits,

its widespread adoption of needs to be

meticulously planned. Following are a few

issues that need to be considered:

• Security of the data: Application

security and controls would need to change

to adapt to the Cloud ecosystem. New

types of mechanisms would be required to

secure data in transit and at rest.

• Regulatory compliance and SLA

(Service Level Agreement): Geopolitical

issues especially for Governments

institutions should be carefully evaluated

before making the transition to the Cloud.

In the Indian context this is especially

relevant as most Cloud data centers are not

located within the country. It is also

important to ensure that local regulations

relevant to each organization should be

adhered to before deciding to move to the

Cloud

• Existing IT Infrastructure: The

traditional ICT architecture is optimized to

cater to the current demand in the sector.

Moving to the Cloud would necessitate a

change in the ICT architecture.

• Network and Support: With

applications moving to the Cloud, there is

a real risk of the network becoming the

single point of failure. Further, due to a

large number of connections to the

external Cloud, the bandwidth may need to

be upgraded.

VIII. CONCLUSION

The Cloud computing is a game changing

phase of IT that is not only impacting the

way computing services are and will be

delivered but also the way in which users

will use IT. The Cloud promises several

benefits but the challenges too need to be

considered when planning for Cloud

adoption in agricultural sector. A move to

the Cloud, however, requires a well

planned strategy as there are many

business and technical constraints that

need to be mitigated. Through this article

we have tried to present a brief

introduction to the cloud computing

technology and the way it can be leveraged

in the field of agriculture.

REFERENCES

[1] Cloud computing and emerging

IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality

for delivering computing as the

5th utility R Buyya et al. / Future

Generation Computer Systems

[2] Cloud Security Alliance.: Dr. G

Sahoo has been associated with Birla

Institute of Technology,,Information

Security, Image Processing and Pattern

Recognition.