What is smart farming? Four components and first steps for small farms

“Smart farming” is often mentioned together with the name of a sensor, a mobile app or a tractor display. International organisations, however, define the concept less by any single product and more by how decisions are made in the field. This guide summarises the framework, the four core components and where a small or medium-sized farm can start.

Terms: digital, precision, smart

FAO's State of Food and Agriculture 2022 treats every farm operation as a three-phase cycle: diagnosis, decision-making and performing. Knowing whether a crop needs water before irrigating is diagnosis; deciding how much and when is the decision; delivering the water is performing. The report counts any technology that assists producers in at least one of these phases as an automation technology, and defines precision agriculture as “a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyses data to improve management decisions” (FAO, 2022).

In this guide, “smart farming” is used as the umbrella term for approaches that link measurement, data and decision support with field operations. Precision farming is the branch that focuses on variability within the field; digital agriculture is the wider frame that also covers records, markets and public services.

Four components: sensing, data, decision, action

Adding data as a separate link to FAO's three phases makes it clearer who on the farm is responsible for what. The table below illustrates the four links with a citrus orchard in Kozan and a cotton or wheat field in Larissa.

Unless the cycle is closed, the investment does not pay: a sensor that is read but never looked at automates sensing without improving the decision. FAO also stresses that automation can start with a single phase, for example sensor-based diagnosis while the decision stays with the farmer (FAO, 2022). A pointer for Thessaly: a survey of 971 farmers in five countries including Greece by the EU Joint Research Centre (JRC) notes that precision agriculture technologies in Greece are mainly applied in cotton and horticulture, and Greece was one of the two countries with the lowest awareness of machine guidance and variable-rate nitrogen application (JRC, 2019). Drip irrigation, soil moisture sensors, NDVI and yield maps are covered in separate guides on the platform.

Framework: FAO, the EU and Türkiye

FAO's 2019 report on digital technologies states that “basic conditions” must be in place first: availability, connectivity, affordability, ICT in education and supportive policies. It also notes that machinery from different brands often cannot be integrated, so farmers must decide which brand to invest in, and that independent advisory services to support these decisions are lacking (FAO, 2019).

In the EU, one of the key objectives of the 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to modernise agriculture and rural areas through knowledge, innovation and digitalisation. According to the European Commission, Member States designed digitalisation strategies within their CAP Strategic Plans for the first time; more than 274,000 farms are to be supported with digital farming technology, and work is under way on a common European agricultural data space (European Commission). Eurostat data for 2023 show that about 43% of EU farms had internet access, about 11% used a farm management information system and about 18% applied at least one precision farming technology; this last group managed about 44% of the EU's utilised agricultural area (Eurostat, 2026).

In Türkiye, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry launched the preparation of a National E-Agriculture Strategy in cooperation with FAO. The report of the kick-off workshop held by TAGEM on 4-6 November 2019 records that 2020 had been declared the “year of digitalisation in agriculture” and that 104 participants from the public sector, private sector, civil society and universities attended its first day (TAGEM, 2019). The 4th Agriculture and Forestry Council (Tarım Orman Şûrası) of 28-30 April 2025 included a dedicated working group on “Digitalisation in Agriculture, Data-Based Agriculture and Technological Development”, whose sub-topics include supplying agricultural data digitally, decision support software, input application technologies and digital tracking of the production chain (Turkish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, 2025).

First steps for small and medium-sized farms

1. Start from the problem, not the device. Is water expensive, fertiliser excessive or labour short? The EU's EIP-AGRI Focus Group on precision farming recommends that small farms adopt precision farming in steps, avoiding large and risky initial investments, and that the first solutions be simple, affordable and robust (EIP-AGRI, 2015).
2. Start with records. Without field boundaries, sowing and harvest dates and the amounts of water, fertiliser and pesticide applied, no measurement can be compared. This is the data link you can build without buying any hardware.
3. Ask about connectivity and compatibility. Is there mobile coverage in the orchard or field? Can the device's data be exported to other software? The brand lock-in problem highlighted by FAO should be raised before purchase (FAO, 2019).
4. Pick one measurable target. For example, less irrigation water per decare (0.1 ha) in a Kozan orchard, or less overlapping spray area on a Larissa cotton plot. Measure the baseline for one season, then add the technology.
5. Consider services and shared use before buying. The same focus group notes that precision farming services can be offered by larger neighbouring farms or by companies as a service (EIP-AGRI, 2015). Cooperative models are covered in the platform's cooperatives guide.
6. Test side by side. Manage one strip of the field the old way and one strip the new way, and record the difference in inputs and yield.

Smart farming is not a shopping list but a way of managing that makes clear who holds each link of the cycle. Knowing which of the sensing, data, decision and action links is weak on your farm is the shortest route to choosing the right first investment.

Sources

1. FAO, 2022. The State of Food and Agriculture 2022: Leveraging automation in agriculture for transforming agrifood systems (Chapter 1: How did we get here? What is agricultural automation?) (accessed 29 September 2026)
2. FAO, 2019. Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Briefing paper (accessed 29 September 2026)
3. European Commission, DG AGRI. Digitalisation of agriculture and rural areas in the EU (accessed 29 September 2026)
4. Eurostat, 2026. 43% of EU farms with internet access (news, 24 July 2026; reference year 2023) (accessed 29 September 2026)
5. T.C. Tarım ve Orman Bakanlığı TAGEM, 2019. Ulusal E-Tarım Stratejisi: Proje Açılış Çalıştayı Raporu (4-6 Kasım 2019, Ankara) (accessed 29 September 2026)
6. T.C. Tarım ve Orman Bakanlığı, 2025. IV. Tarım Orman Şûrası: Tarımda Dijitalleşme, Veri Tabanlı Tarım ve Teknolojik Gelişim Çalışma Grubu (accessed 29 September 2026)
7. EIP-AGRI, 2015. EIP-AGRI Focus Group Precision Farming: Final Report (accessed 29 September 2026)
8. JRC, 2019. Soto, I. et al. The contribution of precision agriculture technologies to farm productivity and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU (JRC112505, doi:10.2760/016263) (accessed 29 September 2026)