Adopting the Internet of Things technologies in agriculture: an analysis of the benefits in the organic wine industry

Researchers and practitioners are paying increasing attention to the opportunities enabled by Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in the agrifood industry, in terms of efficiency (e.g. reducing the consumption of water and pesticides), product quality and traceability. However, there is still limited clarity on the matter, and on the benefits enabled by IoT technologies. The literature is still mainly focused on the analysis of specific case studies: just a few authors provided some preliminary qualitative analysis of the benefits, whereas quantitative assessment are still rare. For these reasons, this paper aims to qualitatively analyse the IoT-enabled benefits, by focusing on organic wine industry, providing some first evidences that can be useful in order to encourage the diffusion of IoT solutions in farms. The paper attempts to provide a twofold contribution: from an academic viewpoint, this study contributes to the knowledge in this field by providing a structured classification of the existing body of research on the role of IoT for Smart Agriculture, and an assessment approach that can be replicated for other supply chains; from a practical perspective, companies belonging to the organic wine industry can gain useful information on benefits enabled by IoT technologies.