Development of a Payment System for Water Distribution in Cluster Farming.

Water shortages greatly impact global agriculture, which accounts for 72% of freshwater use and faces pressure from population growth and climate change in dry and rural regions in Africa, where reduced access to proper irrigation facilities leads to low yields and food deficits. Traditional methods of irrigation, coupled with manual watering, compound these issues due to poor resource distribution (over- or under-irrigation), which causes diseases in crops, disputes among farmers, and limits the adoption of technology. This project creates an Internet of Things (IoT) based Water Distribution and Payment System for Irrigation in Cluster Farming in order to achieve equitable water distribution, increase productivity, and align with the various interventions of the Sustainable Development Goals 2-Zero Hunger and 6-Clean Water and Sanitation. The system utilizes a combination of YF-S201 flow sensors, Arduino Uno and NodeMCU microcontrollers, solenoid valves, and relays for autonomous water flow control, with data stored in a MySQL database. A Node.js backend, HTML/CSS frontend web applications with Stripe/Paystack payment gateways were utilized to ensure safe transactions, provide a GUI, and an irrigation scheduling section, which utilized FAO crop water requirement data for crop water delivery. The system was tested and deployed on Elizade University’s Smart Irrigation Farm, proving precise water delivery (