What is it about?

Hydroponic farming is a sustainable alternative to traditional agriculture, allowing farmers to grow crops more efficiently. This type of farming involves growing plants in water without needing soil. There is increasing agreement that this agricultural approach should be utilized to mitigate food insecurity, particularly considering the fluctuating and unpredictability of weather conditions. However, this approach requires technical expertise in addition to consistent monitoring. Existing research has focused on applying The Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to the automation and monitoring of hydroponic farming systems. However, limited work tested the viability of these systems in the field with farmers. This study focused on including rural subsistence farmers in farming alongside a seven-month and ongoing deployment of an AI and IoT-enabled hydroponics system following a qualitative approach that entailed focus groups with the farmers and observations of the hydroponic systems. This paper discusses the lessons learned regarding unpredictable and uncontrollable extreme weather conditions, equipment failure, choices in nutrient solutions, and pest infestations, which often all have unplanned and unintended consequences for these systems and farmers. We argue that more deployments are needed to better understand how these systems function in real-world settings.

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Why is it important?

In this study, we found that deploying AI and IoT hydroponic grow tents in the field highlighted many complexities that should be discussed in research papers. These complexities include pest infestations, extreme weather conditions, and the choice of equipment and nutrient solutions used, all of which can adversely affect the crops and functioning of these systems. From our experience, we provide technological and non-technical design considerations such as carefully considering the physical placement of hydroponic systems to avoid storm damage, considering the seasons for deployments as some seasons can provide more complexity than others, and securing the electrical connections of the elements in the tent. We further highlight that AI aimed at agriculture settings requires frequent human intervention and should be designed to assist farmers rather than automate the entire plant growth process. We finally highlight that while this deployment provided many lessons, AI and IoT-enabled hydroponic grow tents show promise in addressing food security, if implemented correctly.

Perspectives

Writing this article helped us understand how to work with our farmer partners to understand the complexities of deploying these systems. We hope this article inspires the responsible design of systems aimed at rural communities.

Taryn Wilson
The Independent Institute of Education

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This page is a summary of: The Devil is in the deployment: Lessons learned while deploying an AI and IoT-enabled hydroponics grow tent with rural subsistence farmers in South Africa, July 2024, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3674829.3675090.
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