A Smart Farming Approach in Automatic Detection of Favorable Conditions for Planting and Crop Production in the Upper Basin of Cauca River

The upper basin of Cauca River is one of the most important agricultural and industrial corridors in Colombia. In addition, Colombian relief has a variety of soils and climatic zones, in which the slightest modification of agro-climatic conditions could imply a great impact on sowing, production, yield, crop quality, and hence, the farmers’ income sources. However, these conditions are not the only factors that influence a crop growth; dimensions like biophysical, economic-productive, political-institutional, and socio-cultural establish interrelations that affect the viability of planting and produce a crop in a geographic territory. For a more efficient information management, Smart Farming represents the application of information and communication technologies in order to support more intelligent decisions in the agricultural sector. This study presents a theoretical proposal based on Big Data Analytics to detect appropriate conditions for sowing and crop production in the upper basin of Cauca River. Similarly, the preliminary public datasets (corresponding to biophysical and economic-productive) and main proposal components are described in a general view. Finally, a future implementation and evaluation of this research work is proposed.