Commercial farm management information systems - A demand-oriented analysis of functions in practical use

Abstract

The functions of farm management information systems (FMIS) are mostly examined without considering purchasing statistics as an indicator for their actual use and crucial information for FMIS developers and politics. Thus, the present study analyzes categories and functions of commercial FMIS purchased by farmers within a subsidy program for digital technologies in the German federal state of Bavaria. The FMIS were categorized and linked to eleven general functions. Correlations between supplied FMIS functions and farmers’ purchase decisions were evaluated. Finally, the distribution of FMIS functions and categories were weighted by the number of purchases to reflect their demand. The distribution of categories and functions were also compared to previous studies to show current trends. From October 2018 to June 2020, 52 different FMIS were purchased 569 times, dominated by ten FMIS covering 85 % of purchases. The most purchased FMIS targeted the crop domain. Farmers tend to use office and mobile software versions in combination more often. Although web applications seem to increase, native applications, developed for use on a particular platform or device, were still the most inquired application type. There is evidence that certain functions increase farmers’ willingness to use FMIS when they are available. The most purchased FMIS functions were ‘quality assurance’, ‘inventory’ and ‘finance’. The availability of the functions ‘traceability’ and ‘quality assurance’ clearly increased, confirming a positive trend already predicted in a previous study in 2015. In conclusion, functions providing an automated and site-specific mapping, monitoring, and recording of farm processes and production materials to comply with legislative standards were highly requested by farmers, presumably due to increasing cross-compliance requirements of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union. Future FMIS should therefore include functions for recording and evaluating site-specific agri-environmental measures to support result-based payments and related decision-making.