Design and Development of Cost effective Automatic Fertilization System for Small Scale Farm

Abstract

Most of the developing countries economy largely depends on the agriculture. More than half of the population rely on agriculture related activities for their survival. In spite of dependency on agriculture, the technological development of agricultural work in developing country is not comparable to the countries like Australia or Israel. The main reason behind the lack of development is the small size of farms. Such farmers cannot afford expensive technology available in the market due to limited profit margins. The report describes an autonomous fertilization system that takes care of the fertilization requirements of the small scale farms at affordable rates. The system is divided in two parts namely User Interface and Control System. The user interface is designed using the state of the art Raspberry Pi board and a touch screen LCD. The control system is developed using the Arduino platform and can control five fertilizers at a time. The output of the system is the mix of the fertilizer, which is forced into the drip irrigation system of the farm. The system has built in data for the fertilization requirement for important crops and vegetation. The system also facilitates the customize fertilization requirements to be added in the system as per the user requirements.