The document discusses applications of cloud computing for the agriculture sector in India. It describes how cloud computing can help address challenges in Indian agriculture by providing affordable IT services and tools to farmers. Key applications of cloud computing mentioned include centralized databases for weather information, crop information, and an "ask the expert" question and answer system to help farmers address problems. The cloud computing model allows these services and tools to be accessed on demand without the large upfront costs of traditional IT infrastructure.

1. Applications of Cloud Computing for
Agriculture Sector
Swathi R ,Manasa V
Information science and engineering
Channabasaveshwara institute of technology
Gubbi,Tumkur
Abstract-With the growing population and the
ever growing demand for food, the scientists and
researchers across the globe are busy trying to
find innovative ways to meet these ever surging
demands. The role of Information
Communication Technology (ICT) has always
been extremely crucial for the agriculture sector
owing to the highly unpredictable nature of the
later. With the evolution of Cloud Computing
and its subsequent popularity, the service
providers are coming up with very essay and
affordable solutions for the end users. This
upcoming technology is predicted to bring
revolutionary changes to the agriculture sector.
This article is based on the description of cloud
computing technology and its numerous
benefits. Furthermore, this paper also highlights
how effectively it can contribute to the
agricultural sector.
Keywords: Agriculture, Cloud Computing,Tools
I. INTRODUCTION
Information and communication have
always been an indispensible part of
human race. Ever since people learned to
grow crops, harvested them and sell them
to market, they have sought information
from each other to make the maximum
profit. Even though the farmers have
grown the same crop for centuries, the ever
changing weather conditions, soil fertility,
pests and diseases etc. affects the final
outcome. The latest information allows the
farmers to deal with these changes
smoothly. However, providing such
crucial and timely knowledge is a
challenge in itself owing to the highly
localized nature of agriculture. In past few
years, Information Technologies and tools
are being implemented in the agricultural
sector to cater to these information needs.
However, the initial expenditure for setting
up the ICT infrastructure and its
subsequent maintenance is one of the
primary drawbacks. As a result, the biggest
apprehension for the information
technologist is to find a user friendly,
reliable and at the same time cheaper ICT
.This paper highlights such an application
of ICT which will cater to all such
information needs of an Indian farmer at a
very reasonable and affordable cost. That
latest and most promising area of ICT is
Cloud Computing. It enables the users to
make use of various services and tools
with pay-per use basis without the need to
know the physical location and
configuration of the system that delivers
the services.
II.BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Cloud computing is regarded as a
technology which makes available the IT
allied services in a very simple and user
friendly manner at an affordable cost. The
term “cloud computing” refers to the fact
that users do not really need to know who
is providing those services and the cloud
hid all the technicalities from them. The

2. beauty of cloud computing lies in the fact
that the services can be availed whenever
and wherever needed and the users have to
pay for as much as they use, just like any
utility bills. At the same time, it also offers
participation of less manpower and zero
maintenance of those services.
According to the Cloud Security Alliance
and NIST guidelines for cloud computing,
it has four different deployment models
namely private, community, public and
hybrid. Beside this, based on user
requirement, cloud computing offers the
following basic models to deliver the
services.
• Software as a Service (SaaS):
This model offers ICT tools such as
software, web applications etc., without
the need to buy and install them in specific
machines. Another promising feature of
this model is that the users are billed as per
the uses basis, unlike the traditional way
of paying for the software to purchase it.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS): In
this particular model the end-users are
offered the computing platform for
designing and developing specific
applications without the need to buy the
license or the product. PaaS also takes care
of hosting those applications without much
concern about hardware and data storage
requirement. It also guarantees the
availability of the platforms and their
security.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS):
This form of cloud computing usually
includes components that are used in
availing ICT services, such as virtual
computers, datacenters, traffic monitoring
and redirecting, basic network components
etc. This is the most outstanding benefit of
cloud computing as the organizations
invest the most in establishing the
infrastructure.
Fig. 1: Cloud computing framework
[NIST]
These delivery models form the core of the
cloud and they exhibit certain characteristics
like on demand self-service, broad network
access, resource pooling, measured service and
rapid elasticity. This description of cloud
computing framework can be depicted in the
Fig.1 given above.
ICT in Agriculture: Indian Landscape
Indian agriculture sector has gained
momentum since the inception of the
numerous ICT projects. However due to
lack of factors like poor internet
connectivity in remote areas, lack of IT
infrastructure and poor knowledge and
awareness about these Government
initiatives, the full potential of these
projects is yet to be achived.
III. CURRENT CHALLENGES IN
INDIAN AGRICULTURE
In spite of the above mentioned numerous
ICT projects in India, the country is still
facing several challenges:
• Poor knowledge about the weather
forecast, pests and diseases.

3. • Deficient production information
• Not enough sales and distribution
information
• Inadequate information about
consumption trends
• Insufficient power availability in
rural areas
• Poor ICT infrastructure and ICT
illiteracy
• Non availability of timely and
relevant content, non-integration of
services, poor advisory services and lack
of localization, and in particular non
availability of agricultural information
kiosks/ knowledge centers at the grass root
level.
• Lack of awareness among farmers
about the benefits of ICT in agriculture.
IV. ROLE OF CLOUD COMPUTING IN
SOLVING THESE CHALLENGES
Looking at the potential benefits of cloud
computing we can list out its role in
agricultural development in India. Using
the applications of cloud the farmers have
nothing to worry about hardware and
software investment and also the technical
knowledge required to learn them. The
farmers will send the request for the
specific cloud service using a user friendly
device, and the cloud service provider will
analyze and handle the request
dynamically, and finally the results will be
passed back to the client. They can get
most up-to-date farming and propagation
techniques, pest control knowledge, and
can also track and check the whole process
from production, distribution to consumption.
They can also leverage the systematic
methods in information collection, supply
chain logistics, market forecasting and
business decision-making.
V. CLOUD COMPUTING
IMPLEMENTATION WILL PLAY THE
FOLLOWING ROLE:
• Less or no expenditure on setting
up IT infrastructure as these can be
acquired from the cloud service providers
on pay per use basis. For example,
Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be used
to acquire Widows or Linux Server by
simply specifying how much processor
and storage capacity is needed over the
internet at a very reasonable price.
• On-Demand opportunities for data
sharing, data collection and aggregation
process which is very crucial for
agricultural research and development.
• Rapidly provisioned and released
feature allows for the efficient use of
agricultural resources.
• Cloud Computing elasticity makes
it to process very large database easily
which in turn can make the efficient
supply chain management of agricultural
products
• Measured Service would make it
possible for the farmers to use the cloud
services just like any other utility. They
just need to pay for what they have used.
• Efficient Agricultural Knowledge
Management: With the help of mobile
phone applications farmers can instantly
contribute to the knowledge database by
uploading the crop and soil related
pictures, videos and any other important
information.
• Software-as-a-Service model of
cloud computing provides software tools
without installation on machines which
require capital investment. Since most
farmers are not IT experts it makes them
easier to learn quickly and easily.

4. VI. APPLICATIONS OF CLOUD COMPUTING
The challenges of inadequate knowledge is
mostly due the lack of proper mechanisms
to share the knowledge .The farmers or the
people who have certain information about
pests or diseases or any useful information
are unable to share and propagate with
other people who require it. If the proper
knowledge sharing mechanism is at place
then most of the above stated challenges
can be solved. The cloud can offer a
centralized knowledge bank which can be
used to store all the agriculture related
information. This information bank will be
available to the farmers and other users
from agriculture sector at anyplace and at
anytime at a very reasonable cost. For
example the database for weather related
information stores the region specific
weather information and also the weather
forecast for a specific time period. It will
help the farmers in making appropriate
plans and then take decisions accordingly.
Another application of cloud computing
can be the database for the crop related
information, which stores information
associated with all the possible crops
grown in a particular region and at a
particular season which will help the
farmers of in crop related decision making.
Another significant application can be ask
the expert database which will provide
solutions to common problems that
farmers frequently face. Farmers can also
post their problems seeking for solutions
from the experts. It will also have an
extensive set of frequently asked questions
(FAQs) and their answers to make the
response reach the farmers faster.
Following are some of the possible
database solutions which can be offered as
a service by cloud service providers to the
farmers.
• Store and maintain a database for
the information generated in daily
activities:
• Weather prediction and related
database:
• Database for crop related
information
• Database for market related
information
• Database for production related
data
• Database for agricultural tools
related information
Based on the above applications of
cloud computing,the structure of the
Cloud computing based agricultural
system is depicted in the Fig. 2.
Fig. 2: Cloud based agricultural system

5. VII. ISSUES WITH CLOUD
COMPUTING
While the Cloud promises several benefits,
its widespread adoption of needs to be
meticulously planned. Following are a few
issues that need to be considered:
• Security of the data: Application
security and controls would need to change
to adapt to the Cloud ecosystem. New
types of mechanisms would be required to
secure data in transit and at rest.
• Regulatory compliance and SLA
(Service Level Agreement): Geopolitical
issues especially for Governments
institutions should be carefully evaluated
before making the transition to the Cloud.
In the Indian context this is especially
relevant as most Cloud data centers are not
located within the country. It is also
important to ensure that local regulations
relevant to each organization should be
adhered to before deciding to move to the
Cloud
• Existing IT Infrastructure: The
traditional ICT architecture is optimized to
cater to the current demand in the sector.
Moving to the Cloud would necessitate a
change in the ICT architecture.
• Network and Support: With
applications moving to the Cloud, there is
a real risk of the network becoming the
single point of failure. Further, due to a
large number of connections to the
external Cloud, the bandwidth may need to
be upgraded.
VIII. CONCLUSION
The Cloud computing is a game changing
phase of IT that is not only impacting the
way computing services are and will be
delivered but also the way in which users
will use IT. The Cloud promises several
benefits but the challenges too need to be
considered when planning for Cloud
adoption in agricultural sector. A move to
the Cloud, however, requires a well
planned strategy as there are many
business and technical constraints that
need to be mitigated. Through this article
we have tried to present a brief
introduction to the cloud computing
technology and the way it can be leveraged
in the field of agriculture.
REFERENCES
[1] Cloud computing and emerging
IT platforms: Vision, hype, and reality
for delivering computing as the
5th utility R Buyya et al. / Future
Generation Computer Systems
[2] Cloud Security Alliance.: Dr. G
Sahoo has been associated with Birla
Institute of Technology,,Information
Security, Image Processing and Pattern
Recognition.