TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE SUBSISTENCE AGRICULTURE IN ROMANIA WITH LOW-COST IoT MODULES AND SOLUTIONS – PROOF OF CONCEPT

Climate change is having a strong impact on agriculture, and those most affected are small farmers and those practicing subsistence agriculture. Better management of resources is also needed in this context. IoT monitoring tools enable real-time monitoring of crops to make decisions, for example, regarding irrigation. For them to be used by smallholder and subsistence farmers, the system must be inexpensive and easy to use, preferably with interfaces with which the user is already familiar. We wanted to develop a low-cost system with commercially available components and a familiar interface. Since most households in Romania have Internet access or a cell phone with data, data transfer via WiFi was chosen, and Google Sheets was used for data management. For power supply, different methods were tested, from batteries to autonomous systems with solar cells and supercapacitors. The system has successfully passed the first tests and is now being implemented.