We will learn about the challenges of traditional agriculture farming and the benefits of smart farming. We will gain a deeper understanding of the importance of growing food in an eco-friendly manner.
Click through the highlighted icons below to discover which SDGs are related to this project!
Absolutely! Automated watering systems can play a significant role in reducing water waste, minimizing chemical runoff, and increasing overall water efficiency in various settings such as agriculture, landscaping, and urban gardening. Here's how:
Advancing agricultural practices can have numerous benefits for life on land:
Drawback: Traditional farming in fields is significantly more susceptible to the elements and changes in weather patterns.
Drawback: When we clear land to make space for farms, we're actually taking away homes from many animals like mice, birds, and even bugs
Drawback:Raising livestock like pigs, and cows takes a lot of land. They also make large amounts of methane gas. Methane gas adds to greenhouses gases which impacts climate change. Methane is almost thirty times more likely to warm the planet than carbon dioxide will.
Drawback: A downside of regular farming is the use of pesticides, which are bad for both people and animals. These chemicals can get into local streams and rivers, hurting wildlife. If people eat too much of them, it can also be harmful.
Benefit: Traditional farming is often quite labour intensive as fields can span across many acres. However, this can create many job opportunities for surrounding communities.
Benefit: Since traditional farming makes use of existing land, it has a lower upfront cost compared to high-tech industrial greenhouses.
Benefit: Greenhouses allow plants to be grown in a vertical fashion, which means they take up less space than traditional farming fields.
Benefit: Greenhouses allow for farmers to grow food all year round in all different climates. Plants within a greenhouse get more sun, and grow larger thanks to the ability to control the climate
Benefits: The use of robots helps automate some practices, like harvesting. It leads to increased efficiency, easier recording, and robots can work in situations that might be unsafe for human workers.
Benefits: When farmers use technology to support the growth of their food it opens a world of possibilities. Technology allows farmers to manage their crops remotely, check on their crops in real time, and monitor the quality of soil.
Benefit: By leveraging new innovative technologies like hydroponics, we can create a more sustainable agricultural industry. Hydroponics can use 90% less water than traditional farming, most systems also recycle the water by collecting evaporation and putting it back into the system
Drawbacks: Smart farming tools use advanced and sophisticated technology, which is great for automation, but often means a higher upfront price tag for farmers.
Get hands on and build your own smart farm experience.
You will get to experiment with a watering kit to help save water.
By integrating new technologies into our farming practices, we can increase food production while having more control over energy consumption. This will lessen negative impacts on the environment.
By integrating new technologies into our farming practices, we can increase food production while having more control over energy consumption. This will lessen negative impacts on the environment.
Vertical farming and greenhouses are super cool ways to grow food, especially in cities or places with really tough weather. These smart farming methods make it easier to get fresh and healthy food, even where it's usually hard to find. They could change the way we farm in the future!
By planting in a greenhouse, you can better control pests. Less pests means better plant output! It also means less pesticides are needed, contributing to healthier plants (and people).
Vertical farming has revolutionized the way we grow crops by utilizing stacks of shelves indoors. Taking up significantly less space compared to traditional farmers fields.
By utilizing moisture sensors and other technology like smart monitoring systems, crops receive optimal watering - reducing waste and maximizing growth.
Greenhouses not only save water and land, but also allow farmers to grow crops year-round, regardless of weather conditions.
By using smart farming to track moisture content in the soil, crops only get watered when they really need it. This would save a lot of water that will otherwise be wasted.
A green house is a structure made of glass that stays warm inside all year round. When then sun is shining inside it warms the plants and the air. Then warmth inside helps to grow plants all year.
Coding Description:
Use an if statement to determine the moisture level of the soil and if the moisture level is below a certain amount, run the pump motor for a certain amount of time. Change the LED to your desired colour and keep it on forever.
Additional or supplementary explanation "The code runs in a forever loop, repeatedly executing the contained instructions. Within this loop, it sets the color of all pixels in an LED ring to a purplish hue. It then checks whether the moisture level read from a moisture sensor is above a threshold of 50. If the moisture level is above the threshold, it displays a happy face icon on the micro:bit's LED matrix. If the moisture level is not above the threshold, it displays a sad face icon, activates a water pump motor for 500 milliseconds, pauses for 500 milliseconds, and then clears the LED matrix display. This code essentially monitors soil moisture, provides visual feedback through icons and the LED ring, and briefly activates the water pump if moisture is insufficient.
If you want to try it without the tutorial go to the next slide.
Educator Notes:
After students have coded and constructed their prototype, the goal is to have them use the prototype to complete and additional challenge.
Completed Code here.
Objective:To count how many times the plant has been watered or the pump has turned on.
Coding Description:
In this code, a counter is initialized. Within an ongoing loop, an LED ring is set to a specific color. The code then checks if the moisture level, detected by a moisture sensor, has surpassed the threshold of 50, indicating moist soil. If so, it displays a happy icon; otherwise, it shows a sad icon. In cases of dry soil, the system triggers a watering action for half a second, increments the counter, pauses for another half a second, and then clears the display.
Check your students understanding by asking the following questions:
1. Now that you have one plant being watered with the system let's see how well it does in comparison to traditionally watering. Get another plant place in beside the one hooked up the auto irrational system which one does better at the end of the week? or a month?
2. Take this data and track it using a graph if your choice.