Developing a data collection application for following up the small-scale dairy farms’ performance in rural areas

Abstract

The mobile application is an effective tool for data collection of performance in agriculture, particularly for small and geographically scattered farms. This study aimed to develop an economical and straightforward application to monitor small dairy herds performance with the flexibility to collect data remotely. The developed mobile application was designed using the MIT App Inventor. Where, the application explores icons of different farm management practices that are reported by farmers through touching the screen. Each icon is linked with an informative SMS, which was received by the mobile phone of the collection technician. We randomly selected and followed 18 farmers to test the application for one year. The main results were recognized the false SMS decreased as farmers took enough time for training in the software. Furthermore, most of sent SMS were for milk yield event. Age, level of education and land size had no significant effect on correct SMS sent by farmers, while herd size showed a significant effect. In Conclusion, mobile application could be developed for continuous data collection and following up small dairy farms in rural areas. Also, the validity test for the developed mobile application confirmed that farmers were able to use the new technology regardless their age and educational level.