The role of RFID in agriculture: Applications, limitations and challenges

Abstract

The recent advances in RFID offer vast opportunities for research, development and innovation in agriculture. The aim of this paper is to give readers a comprehensive view of current applications and new possibilities, but also explain the limitations and challenges of this technology. RFID has been used for years in animal identification and tracking, being a common practice in many farms. Also it has been used in the food chain for traceability control. The implementation of sensors in tags, make possible to monitor the cold chain of perishable food products and the development of new applications in fields like environmental monitoring, irrigation, specialty crops and farm machinery. However, it is not all advantages. There are also challenges and limitations that should be faced in the next years. The operation in harsh environments, with dirt, extreme temperatures; the huge volume of data that are difficult to manage; the need of longer reading ranges, due to the reduction of signal strength due to propagation in crop canopy; the behavior of the different frequencies, understanding what is the right one for each application; the diversity of the standards and the level of granularity are some of them.