Internet of things enabled smart agriculture: Current status, latest advancements, challenges and countermeasures

It is no wonder that agriculture plays a vital role in the development of some countries when their economies rely on agricultural activities and the production of food for human survival. Owing to the ever-increasing world population, estimated at 7.9 billion in 2022, feeding this number of people has become a concern due to the current rate of agricultural food production subjected to various reasons. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) based technologies in the 21st century has led to the reshaping of every industry, including agriculture, and has paved the way for smart agriculture, with the technology used towards automating and controlling most aspects of traditional agriculture. Smart agriculture, interchangeably known as smart farming, utilizes IoT and related enabling technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data in agriculture and offers the potential to enhance agricultural operations by automating and making intelligent decisions, resulting in increased efficiency and a better yield with minimum waste. Consequently, most governments are spending more money and offering incentives to switch from traditional to smart agriculture. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 global pandemic served as a catalyst for change in the agriculture industry, driving a shift toward greater reliance on technology over traditional labor for agricultural tasks. In this regard, this research aims to synthesize the current knowledge of smart agriculture, highlighting its current status, main components, latest application areas, advanced agricultural practices, hardware and software used, success stores, potential challenges, and countermeasures to them, and future trends, for the growth of the industry as well as a reference to future research.