A Conceptual Model for Development of Small Farm Management Information System: A Case of Indonesian Smallholder Chili Farmers

Abstract

Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) assists farmers in managing their farms more effectively and efficiently. However, the use of FMIS to support crop cultivation is, at the present time, relatively expensive for smallholder farmers. Due to some handicaps, providing an FMIS that is suitable for small-holder farmers is a challenge. To analyze this gap, this study followed 3 steps, namely: (1) identified commodity and research area, (2) performed Farmers’ Information Needs Assessment (FINA), and (3) developed the conceptual model using the Soft System Methodology. Indonesian smallholder chili farmers are used as a case study. The most required information of smallholder’ farmers was identified through a qualitative questionnaire. Despite this, not all identified information needs could be accurately mapped. Thus, this indicates the need for a new FMIS conceptual model that is suitable for smallholder farmers. This study proposes an FMIS conceptual model for farm efficiency that incorporates five layers, namely farmers’ information needs, data quality assessment, data extraction, SMM (split, match and merge), and presentation layer. SMM layer also provides a method to comprehensively tackle three main problems in data interoperability problems, namely schema heterogeneity, schema granularity, and mismatch entity naming.