Digital twin in agriculture

The concept of digital twin is enormously supporting the agricultural sector, especially in all those realities that have decided to abandon traditional agriculture in favor of precision agriculture, installing IoT technologies and computerizing their infrastructure.

But what is meant by digital twin and how does it integrate with the IoT?

A digital twin, literally digital twin, is a virtual copy of a device, a machine or an entire ecosystem. The twin word makes us understand how we try to recreate real elements in as much detail as possible, in order to work on a digital copy of them.

The internet of things, on the other hand, involves making objects intelligent, allowing them to communicate with each other through the use of wireless connections and, sometimes, integrate devices and devices that allow the optimization of the processes involved.

Combining the concept of IoT with that of digital twin therefore allows you to recreate a specific working context and understand and exploit all the potential of the connection between objects. Up to now we have in fact focused on IoT innovations as ways to have greater control of your machinery and production, which allow you to take advantage of data collection and remote control to improve performance. Now we are entering the context of predictive analysis and simulations, a context that can be extremely interesting in the field of agrifood.

In fact, let’s imagine we want to try to anticipate the effects of a certain action, such as crop rotation, trying to be as precise as possible considering all the factors involved: workforce, tools to manage crops, weather, etc. A digital twin allows you to make this kind of prediction extremely accurately and without any risk. The IoT allows you to collect data by populating predictive analysis software that will begin to accurately understand the characteristics of a given crop, and then move on to simulations on digital twins.

We are therefore moving from precision agriculture, or agriculture 4.0, to a new sector, born recently, in strong growth and extremely important for issues related to the environment and eco-sustainability, smart farming.

If you want to find out more about future agricultural trends, read this article as well.