Future Perspectives of Farm Management Information Systems

Abstract

Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS) have evolved from simple record keeping to sophisticated solutions able to capture new trends involving spatial and temporal management, distributed sensors involving interoperability of sensing devices, future internet applications and web services. The FMIS were initially designed to deal with the farmer as the main focus of the system, whereas now data flow from and to the tractor information board, and connections with other pieces of equipment such as precision agriculture devices can be managed through an FMIS. This pathway of evolution has led to the inclusion of a rich set of functionalities and opened up the possibility to improve the cost control of farms. In this chapter, we present the state-of-the-art on these topics depicting the new functionalities included in evolved FMIS and how they can connect the farm to the external context and stakeholders. Then, we delve into the costing functionality of FMIS to understand how precision agriculture can improve the allocation of costs to final products. Finally, we conclude our discussion on the process of adoption of FMIS in European farms.