Abstract
Vegetables constitute a major food source with huge nutritional values as well as major source of income. The cultivation of vegetables is dictated by climate and seasonal changes across Nigeria. Edo State lies within the South of Nigeria and enjoys the two popular seasons (rainy and dry) like many other parts of the country. However, the variability in soil distribution and weather conditions across different locations is a determining factor as to the category of not just vegetables to grow but other crops. In this paper, Edo state is used as a flagship project for its diverse potentials and uniqueness in respect of known variability in soil and weather conditions. The State is divided into three geo-referenced agricultural districts. A prototype system is proposed to provide vegetable farmers with real-time information on vegetablefarming requirements. The proposed system is an Internet of things (IoT)-enabled climate variability system with interfaces to popular mobile networks, existing Geographical Information System (GIS) in the State, and remote sensing stations respectively. Each geo-referenced point is a nexus to areas with similar weather variability and soil distribution. Historical data is collected from the existing GIS and a provision is made to constantly enrich the historical data with new information from the geo-referenced points including crops grown, trends in cultivation, queries from farmers, etc. The information generated from the geo-referenced locations are routed via GPS to the central analytics server in the cloud and appropriate algorithms are used to carry out data analysis for real-time prediction and messages to farmers through the Internet and Short Message Services (SMS). With this system, it is submitted that subsistent and mechanized farmers would benefit through the guidance of an analytics system thereby boosting vegetablefarming regardless of the season of the year.
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