Types of Agriculture Sensors and Their Benefits
- Nguyen Nhut Quy
- Aug 6
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 15
As agriculture embraces the digital era, data is quickly becoming the new fertilizer. Whether you're growing strawberries in a high-tech greenhouse or managing irrigation across open fields, one thing is clear: agriculture sensors are no longer optional—they're essential.
These sensors serve as the frontline collectors of in-time data, tracking everything from soil moisture and pH to sunlight and carbon dioxide levels. But with dozens of sensor types now available, farmers and agronomists often ask: Which ones do I actually need for my farm? And how do they work together to improve yield, sustainability, and profitability?
In this article, we’ll walk you through the most common types of agriculture sensors—what they measure, how they work, and where they’re most useful. Whether you’re looking to optimize your irrigation, monitor greenhouse climate, or fine-tune your nutrient delivery, this guide will help you choose the right tools for smarter farming.
What Are Agriculture Sensors and Why They Matter?
The growing complexity of modern farming—driven by climate variability, labor shortages, and rising input costs—has made agriculture sensors indispensable. These devices are not only tools for measurement but also enablers of data-driven agriculture, allowing producers to transition from intuition-based to insight-based decisions.
From guesswork to in-time insights
Manual inspections are often reactive and limited in scope. In contrast, sensor networks provide continuous, location-specific data, helping farmers detect early signs of crop stress, soil imbalances, or shifting microclimates—before they escalate into major problems.
Smarter resource management
With precise readings on soil moisture, ambient conditions, and nutrient levels, sensors support targeted irrigation and fertilization, minimizing waste and maximizing input efficiency. This is especially critical in regions facing water scarcity or high fertilizer prices.
Improved yield stability and operational control
Timely environmental data enables more predictable planning and proactive interventions, resulting in healthier crops, fewer losses, and stronger seasonal consistency.
Regulatory and sustainability alignment
As countries enforce stricter environmental policies, sensors help demonstrate compliance—while also advancing goals like carbon reduction, water conservation, and efficient land use.
This is not just a field-level shift—it’s a global market trend. According to a 2024 report by Grand View Research, the global smart agriculture market is projected to grow from USD 25.36 billion in 2024 to USD 54.71 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.9% from 2025 to 2030. A major force behind this expansion is the widespread use of sensing devices—which form part of the hardware segment that accounts for over 66% of the total market.
These sensors are the backbone of critical applications like precision farming, smart greenhouses, and livestock monitoring, providing the real-time insights needed to drive productivity, sustainability, and scalability across agriculture.
A List of Agriculture Sensors and Their Applications
With dozens of sensor types now available on the market, selecting the right ones can be overwhelming. Each sensor serves a specific purpose—measuring different environmental, soil, or crop parameters—and delivers unique insights that support smarter farming decisions.
However, not all sensors are created equal, and not every farm needs them all. The most effective approach is to match the sensor type to your specific use case: Are you managing an open-field orchard or a climate-controlled greenhouse? Are your goals focused on saving water, maximizing yield, or reducing fertilizer input?
In the following section, we’ll break down the most common types of agriculture sensors—what they measure, how they work, and where they’re most valuable. Whether you're just beginning your smart farming journey or looking to upgrade your sensor network, this list will help you identify the right tools for your operational and agronomic goals.
Temperature and Humidity Sensor
Among the most widely used sensors in agriculture, temperature and humidity sensors enable farmers to track critical climate conditions affecting crop growth and disease risk. By continuously capturing air temperature and relative humidity, these sensors help maintain optimal environments in greenhouses, barns, storage areas, or open fields.
In many crops, even a few degrees’ difference in temperature or a short period of high humidity can influence flowering cycles, pest outbreaks, or fungal growth. Traditional weather stations may not detect such localized microclimates, especially in shaded areas or under protective covers. By installing distributed sensors at crop level, farmers can obtain in-time data for smarter decisions on ventilation, irrigation, or spraying.
Soil Moisture Sensor
Soil moisture plays a critical role in both agricultural productivity and environmental monitoring. In precision farming, understanding when and how much to irrigate can make the difference between resource efficiency and water waste. But moisture levels in the ground are highly dynamic—impacted by soil type, plant cover, evaporation rates, and even fertilizer concentrations.
Wireless soil moisture sensors provide an in-time, localized view of underground conditions. Instead of relying on estimates or periodic field checks, growers and researchers can make decisions based on what the soil actually needs—zone by zone, plant by plant. This helps prevent both overwatering and underwatering, improving plant health while minimizing cost.
Beyond agriculture, these sensors also support flood risk management, infrastructure stability, and environmental restoration projects, where underground moisture levels directly influence soil strength and erosion patterns.
Modern soil sensors, like those developed by Daviteq, use advanced Frequency Domain Reflectometry instead of basic capacitive methods. This enables high accuracy without being skewed by temperature or fertilizer interference—making them highly reliable in real-world field deployments.
Soil pH Sensor
Understanding the soil pH level is fundamental to effective crop production and fertilizer application. A small deviation in pH can significantly impact nutrient availability, microbial activity, and even the solubility of certain minerals. Yet, in traditional farming, pH is often checked manually—periodically, and not always at the right time.
With wireless pH sensors, farms can continuously monitor soil acidity or alkalinity in different zones, enabling more responsive treatment plans. This is especially useful for large-scale, high-value crops or automated irrigation systems where pH shifts may occur due to weather, runoff, or fertilizer use.
By integrating pH monitoring into your smart farming setup, you not only gain visibility—but also the ability to automate corrective actions such as lime or acid injection, right when it’s needed.
Ambient Light Sensor
In greenhouses and crop fields alike, light is more than just illumination — it's a trigger for growth, flowering, and even stress responses. But not all sunlight is consistent, and over- or underexposure can affect both yield and quality.
Traditionally, farmers relied on rough estimates or occasional manual readings to assess light levels. This approach, however, often misses key variations throughout the day — especially during overcast conditions, seasonal shifts, or when using shade nets and artificial lighting.
Wireless ambient light sensors now enable continuous tracking of light intensity (lux) across multiple zones. By installing them in key locations — from greenhouse rooftops to shaded crop rows — farmers can make real-time adjustments to lighting systems, shading controls, or irrigation timing.
Adding ambient light data into your smart agriculture setup brings clarity to an invisible factor, helping optimize conditions for each crop’s photosynthetic potential — without guesswork.
Carbon Dioxide Sensor
Controlling CO₂ levels is critical for optimizing photosynthesis—especially in greenhouses and enclosed farming systems. But relying on periodic, manual checks often leads to missed fluctuations caused by ventilation, heating, or plant respiration.
Wireless CO₂ sensors provide continuous insights into carbon dioxide concentration, with options to also measure temperature and humidity. This enables farms to respond dynamically—adjusting airflow, fine-tuning irrigation schedules, or optimizing lighting—based on actual conditions.
By adding CO₂ sensing to your smart agriculture setup, you enable more stable climate control, higher yields, and better plant health—without the guesswork.
Wireless Level Monitoring
In many industrial and agricultural operations, accurately tracking the level of liquids or solids—such as water, oil, chemicals, grains, or cement—is critical for ensuring uninterrupted processes, preventing overflow, and optimizing inventory.
Yet, traditional level sensing systems often rely on wired installations or manual checks, which are labor-intensive, hard to scale, and prone to failure in harsh environments. Wireless level sensors offer a smarter alternative. With LoRaWAN-based connectivity, these sensors provide long-range, low-power, and maintenance-free monitoring across various tank types and silo configurations. Whether you're overseeing remote pump stations, managing bulk storage in a factory, or automating irrigation in smart agriculture, in-time level data empowers timely decisions and prevents costly downtime.
Depending on the application, you can choose from:
Laser sensors for non-contact, high-dust solid level measurement
Ultrasonic sensors for measuring liquid levels with minimal interference
Miniature radar sensors for compact setups or mobile tanks
Pulse radar sensors for high-precision applications in water infrastructure
These wireless level sensors from Daviteq are built for tough conditions and designed to last up to 10 years—enabling scalable, smart monitoring without the wiring burden.
How to Choose the Right Sensor for Your Farm
Choosing the right sensor starts not with technology—but with your challenges on the field. Are you struggling with dry patches, inconsistent yields, or wasted fertilizer? Each of these points to a specific need: moisture, nutrient balance, environmental control, or even early stress detection. Instead of starting with what sensors are available, ask: What decisions am I trying to improve?
If irrigation is your concern, a soil moisture sensor is often the first and most impactful tool—especially when tied to automated irrigation systems. But if your crop quality varies despite good watering, then pH or EC sensors might help uncover nutrient inconsistencies. For indoor or semi-controlled environments like greenhouses, ambient sensors that monitor light, temperature, humidity, or CO₂ can reveal hidden microclimate issues before they affect plant growth.
Beyond what you measure, how you measure it also matters. A sensor that works well in one setting may be unsuitable for another due to range or power requirements. For example, a large outdoor orchard or field will need long-range, low-power wireless sensors—using technologies like LoRaWAN or NB-IoT that can transmit data several kilometers to a central gateway. In contrast, compact farms or greenhouses may benefit from shorter-range wireless setups with higher sensor density.
Another key consideration is battery life and data frequency. For slow-moving variables like tank levels or deep soil temperature, a weekly update with a 10-year battery is ideal. But in fast-changing environments like greenhouses or weather-exposed zones, you’ll need data every 10–15 minutes. Choose accordingly—and don’t forget to factor in solar or replaceable power options if needed.
Finally, remember: a sensor is just one part of your decision-making process. The best outcomes come from integration. Make sure your sensor can communicate with your existing systems—whether that’s an irrigation controller, fertigation pump, or farm analytics platform. Open protocols and cloud-ready infrastructure are crucial if you want to scale later.
In short, pick the sensor that solves your most urgent problem today—but make sure it also fits into the bigger system you're building for tomorrow.
And that system often includes more than just sensing—it includes action. For precision irrigation, being able to automatically open or close water flow based on sensor data is crucial. This is where wireless valve controllers come in. Daviteq provides multiple wireless valve control solutions depending on your needs:
WSLRW-BV: A complete mini valve integrated with a LoRaWAN module—ideal for fast deployment in gardens, smart farms, or greenhouses.
WSLRW-LRO: A low-power node designed to control normal solenoid valves using brief electrical pulses. Great for retrofit applications.
WSLRW-LSV: Built for latching solenoid valves, providing pulsed control at 9V—perfect for battery-operated or remote zones.
WSLRW-RL: A powered relay output node designed to control various valve types that require external power, offering the most flexible option for broader integration scenarios.
These devices allow your smart agriculture system to not only monitor environmental conditions, but also act immediately—automating irrigation at the exact time and location it’s needed.
Key Benefits of Agriculture Sensors
Modern farming faces rising demands for precision, sustainability, and efficiency—and wireless agriculture sensors are proving essential in meeting those goals. By capturing accurate, in-time environmental data across the field, these sensors help producers like Laura move beyond guesswork and into optimized, data-driven agriculture.
Better Irrigation Management
Wireless soil moisture sensors (e.g., WSLRW-SMT, WSSFC-SMT, WSNB-SMT) deliver continuous, zone-specific moisture data. This enables irrigation to occur only when and where needed, helping conserve water and improve root zone health. It also supports automation via smart irrigation systems, reducing labor while enhancing crop uniformity.
Climate and Light Awareness
Environmental conditions directly affect crop development. Daviteq’s ambient temperature, humidity, and light sensors (e.g., WSLRW-ATH, WSSFC-ATH, WSLRW-AL) give farmers real-time visibility into microclimates, greenhouse lighting, or canopy heat levels—so they can adjust ventilation, shading, or watering proactively.
Nutrient Optimization and pH Balance
Soil health isn't just about water—it’s also about chemistry. The LoRaWAN pH Transmitter helps monitor acidity and alkalinity shifts, supporting decisions about lime or sulfur applications. When paired with wireless temperature and CO₂ sensors, producers gain a more complete picture of nutrient availability and root respiration conditions.
Pest and Disease Prevention
Changes in temperature, humidity, or CO₂ levels often precede outbreaks of disease or insect pressure. By combining Daviteq’s gas, climate, and environmental sensors, farmers can create an early warning system—enabling timely interventions instead of reactive damage control.
Smarter Storage and Harvest Timing
For high-value or perishable crops, indoor CO₂ and temperature sensors are crucial post-harvest. They help monitor storage rooms, silos, or greenhouses, ensuring produce stays within safe conditions and optimizing ventilation or chilling cycles when needed.
Scalability and Low Maintenance
Thanks to LPWAN technologies (LoRaWAN, Sigfox, NB-IoT), these sensors operate on long-range, low-power networks, making them ideal for large-scale farms or remote fields. With battery lifespans up to 10 years, minimal maintenance is required, helping reduce overhead and total cost of ownership.
Agricultural sensors are no longer experimental—they are essential. As the industry shifts toward data-informed, resource-conscious farming, having the right set of sensors is not just about automation; it’s about unlocking new levels of precision, efficiency, and sustainability.
From measuring soil moisture and pH to tracking light exposure, CO₂ levels, and liquid storage, each sensor plays a role in ensuring that crops get exactly what they need—when they need it. The result? Better yields, lower costs, and stronger environmental compliance. Whether you manage a high-tech greenhouse, a broad-acre plantation, or are transitioning toward digital farming, the right sensors—paired with LPWAN connectivity like LoRaWAN, Sigfox, or NB-IoT—can be the backbone of your smart agriculture ecosystem.
At Daviteq, we design sensors with reliability, scalability, and long battery life in mind—so you can focus on what matters: growing better, smarter, and more sustainably.
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