Multi-level automation of farm management information systems

Abstract

As innovative information and communication technology (ICT) tools were gradually introduced over the past decades into the agricultural sector, the use of farm management information systems (FMIS) was widely expanded and nowadays are regarded as important tools for managing the agricultural business. Nevertheless, the necessary workload for collecting, aggregating and importing data related to farming activities into a FMIS, is a task which is often time-consuming and farmers are reluctant to perform. The current paper describes the implementation of three automation levels, which enhance a FMIS by providing solutions related to the collection of fragmented-missing data and time-consuming data entry. The three levels involve: (i) the development of a modular FMIS based on future internet technologies, (ii) the use of standard values for assessing the cost of performed agricultural tasks and (iii) automating the process of importing task-related data into a FMIS using tractor’s CAN-Bus ISO 11783 and SAE J1939 communication information. To assess the financial analysis of the developed FMIS, related data were collected, recorded and analysed for an entire growing season, from two distinct crops, i.e. winter wheat and maize. Furthermore, to assess the automated task formulation in the FMIS, machine data were acquired while ploughing with a mouldboard plough. The application proved capable of performing a profitability analysis based on the recorded cost transactions but also based on the information given by the user related to the performed tasks. With the automatically created task, the FMIS gave the possibility to the user to present and process the necessary information with minimum effort.