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How IoT Is Reshaping the Future of Agriculture

Plus our top IoT stories of the week!

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IoT For All
July 03, 2025

Hello readers,

Welcome to the IoT For All newsletter! This week we’re talking about using IoT to scale world agriculture to feed 10 billion, essential IoT compliance guidelines, Bluetooth Channel Sounding, and more!

From Soil to Signal: Farming the Future

The agricultural sector is facing a triple threat: surging global food demand, extreme climate volatility, and a shrinking labor force. Projected growth puts the world population at 10 billion by 2050 will require as much as 70% more food production, even as farmland is lost to drought, erosion, and rising seas. Meanwhile, the average U.S. farmer is nearly 60 years old, and younger generations aren’t exactly lining up to work the fields. For agriculture to survive (and thrive), IoT adoption is no longer optional. It’s a strategic imperative.

The market agrees. The global IoT in agriculture market, valued at $14.8 billion in 2023, is expected to more than double by 2032, with other forecasts projecting growth as high as $54 billion depending on how where you draw the borders. This momentum is driven by everything from AI-enhanced sensors and GPS-guided tractors to growing government support and the rise of software-as-a-service offerings for farms. Hardware still dominates, but services and analytics platforms are quickly catching up as growers look to extract more value from their data.

Precision farming is leading the charge, using soil sensors, drones, and data platforms to apply the right resources in the right place at the right time. That means higher yields, lower costs, and major water savings, like the 70% reduction seen on some Chilean blueberry farms. Smart greenhouses are transforming urban and climate-challenged regions, enabling year-round crop production with up to 90% less water and 30% higher yields while minimizing the need for pesticides.

Of course, real-world deployment is still uneven. The high cost of connected tech, weak rural connectivity, and a steep learning curve all create adoption barriers, especially for smaller farms. Many IoT systems flood farmers with data they don’t know how to interpret, and patchy standardization makes it hard to integrate devices from different vendors.

But these roadblocks aren’t insurmountable. LPWAN networks and satellite internet are closing the coverage gap. Managed services are making it easier to outsource complexity. And more companies are prioritizing intuitive UX and “farming-as-a-service” business models to lower the barrier to entry.

If agriculture is going to meet the demands of the coming decades, it’s going to need more than grit and good weather. It’s going to need data collected by smart devices, analyzed in real time, and used to drive every decision from planting to harvest. The seeds of a digital revolution are already being sown—the challenge is ensuring they take root everywhere, so the harvest is big enough to feed the future.

📖 Top Articles

If you’re responsible for managing an IoT deployment, your role may include designing smart products as an OEM, enabling connectivity as a solutions provider or overseeing complex global rollouts as an enterprise leader. In any of these cases, IoT regulatory compliance has become one of your most critical success factors.

A rugged Internet of Things (IoT) device is sturdy and durable, making it an excellent fit for extreme environments like mining or aerospace engineering. However, even casual sectors like retail can benefit from them if the use case is right. 

Ruggedized IoT can handle extreme temperatures, vibrations, moisture, and mechanical stress that would irreparably damage other devices. While it is best suited for industrial and military operations, numerous sectors can use it. 

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is increasingly seen as the gold standard in wireless ranging. However, it’s not always practical. That simple fact sits at the heart of an emerging story in indoor positioning.

While ultra-wideband (UWB) delivers impressive centimeter-level accuracy, it often comes with hardware complexity and cost that many manufacturers can’t easily absorb. Meanwhile, another technology is quietly positioning itself as a highly capable alternative—one that billions of devices already carry: Bluetooth.

🔥 Rapid Fire

🎙️ The IoT For All Podcast

In the latest episode of the IoT For All Podcast, Jingyi Chew, Marketing Specialist at Milesight, joins Ryan Chacon to discuss the state of smart buildings. The conversation covers wireless IoT solutions, people sensing, LoRaWAN, the challenges of making buildings smart, real-world smart building use cases and success stories, the importance of partners in IoT, and advice for deploying smart building solutions.

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