EU smart farming project to deliver real-time soil data

“Demand for sustainably produced food is driving current strategies in the intensification of the agricultural sector worldwide. To meet these challenges farmers will need to adopt a whole-farm approach to resource efficiency,” said Suzanne Lesecq, CEA-Leti director of research. “Meanwhile, there is no commercial system that provides real-time, in-situ concentration of different nutrients in the soil, while monitoring gaseous emissions just above the soil.”

Reagent-free sensor platform

Deployed via small, private Internet of Things networks, the SARMENTI sensor node will provide farmers with the next generation of a reagent-free sensor platform to monitor in real-time soil nutrient concentration and measure local environmental conditions, especially emission of ammonia and greenhouse gases.

Paris Agreement Emission Targets

Agriculture globally is a major source of greenhouse gasses. As EU member states seek to hit emission targets set in the Paris Agreement, projects like SARMENTI are to provide continuous data for their farmers to track emission of hazardous gases and monitor the proper decomposition of manure.

EU Nitrates Directive

Current soil analyses are neither real-time nor in-situ, which limits the value of the results for farmers, according to CEA-Leti. SARMENTI-developed sensors will measure in-situ, high-temporal-resolution soil nutrient concentration that farmers can use to improve fertiliser management practices. This is to help reduce nitrogen losses to the environment due to inappropriate fertiliser application and to meet goals of the EU’s Nitrates Directive, which aims to protect water quality by preventing nitrates from agricultural sources from polluting ground and surface water.

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Current soil analyses are neither real-time nor in-situ, which limits the value of the results for farmers, according to CEA-Leti. – Photo: Hans Banus

SARMENTI Soil and Air Probes

In addition, low-cost monitoring of ammonia, methane and nitrous oxide emissions will help producers track the nitrogen cycle and reduce losses due to denitrification, as well as promote the proper decomposition of manure.

The architecture for the SARMENTI IoT node is made of 3 devices:

• A soil probe mainly contains electrochemical sensors in a hygroscopic membrane to monitor soil nutrient concentration.
• An air probe located just above the ground monitors gases and environmental conditions in the environment surrounding the soil probe.
• A smart data logger collects data from both probes and transmits them directly to the cloud. From these data, cloud advanced analytics will provide farmers with advice about optimal fertilisation.