Agricultural Information Technology Research Articles

Information technology promotes the development of agriculture in China: the mechanism, bottleneck problems and solutions

With the purpose of maximizing productive efficiency by means of leveraging information technology in agriculture, this study creates agriculture information system which constitutes factors from supply-side based on the theories of economics. Then, Gray Correlation Analysis has been used to analyze agro- industrialization. The wide application of the Internet and financial support in agriculture exert significant positive effect on the development of agriculture. At the same time, less agriculture weather stations, developing agriculture futures have no obviously positive effect on it. Low level education of the rural labour has the negative effect on it. Therefore, suggestions like increasing the investment on rural education, giving more support on land conservation, integrating the data from different relevant fields to develop agriculture futures, developing meteorological monitoring technology are given based on the experience of developed countries.

Percieved effects of information and communication technologies in agricultural extension service delivery in Owerri West Lga of Imo State, Nigeria

ICTs devices have great potential for use in agricultural extension delivery and are increasingly being used without corresponding research into their optimal use. The study analyzed the effects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in agricultural extension in Owerri West Local Government Area of Imo State, Nigeria. Specifically, the study described the socioeconomic characteristics of farmers, identified the level of awareness of farmers on ICTs devices, described the type of ICTs devices available for use in agricultural extension delivery, examined the effectiveness of ICTs devices and identified the barriers farmers face in the use of ICT devices. Sample size comprised fifty (50) farming households selected using simple random sampling techniques. Structured questionnaire was the main tool for data collection. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools and multiple regression analysis. Mean age was 45 years. Majority (74.0%) were male and about 76.0% were married with a mean household size of 6 persons. Mean farming experience was 20 years, while about 78. 0% were members of farmers’ associations. Average monthly farm income was ₦49, 500.00. Greater proportions (58.0%) did not have access to extension agents. Sizable proportions (82.00%) were highly aware of various ICT tools used in agricultural extension.. Estimated multiple regression models revealed that the socio-economic characteristics of the farmers have a significant influence on their level of effectiveness in use of ICTs devices. Farmers identified high cost of ICTs devices (94.00%) and inadequate power supply (86.00%) as their barriers in the use of ICTs devices in the area. It was recommended that seminars and workshops should be organized for farmers on the use of various ICTs devices as this would enhance their use of ICT and promote effective agricultural delivery.Keywords: Agricultural extension, Information and Communication Technology), Extension services, Imo State

A review on blockchain applications in the agri-food sector.

Food security can benefit from the technology's transparency, relatively low transaction costs and instantaneous applications. A blockchain is a distributed database of records in the form of encrypted blocks, or a public ledger of all transactions or digital events that have been executed and shared among participating parties and can be verified at any time in the future. Generally, the robust and decentralized functionality of the blockchain is used for global financial systems, but it can easily be expanded to contracts and operations such as tracking of the global supply chain. In the precision agriculture context, Information and Communications Technology can be further implemented with a blockchain infrastructure to enable new farm systems and e-agriculture schemes. The purpose of this review is to show a panorama of the scientific studies (enriched by a terms mapping analysis) on the use of blockchain in the agri-food sector, from both an entirely computational and an applicative point of view. As evidenced by the network analysis, the reviewed studies mainly focused on software aspects (e.g. the architecture and smart contracts). However, some aspects regarding the different blockchain knots (computers always connected to the blockchain network) having the role to store and distribute an updated copy of each block in a food supply-chain, result of crucial importance. These technologies appear very promising and rich of great potential showing a good flexibility for applications in several sectors but still immature and hard to apply due to their complexity. © 2019 Society of Chemical Industry.

Assessment of the determinants that influence the adoption of sustainable soil and water conservation practices in Techiman Municipality of Ghana

This paper assesses the relationship between farmer characteristics and the degree to which nine soil and water conservation practices (SWCPs) are adopted by 300 maize farmers in Techiman Municipality, Ghana. Farmers were surveyed for their adoption of nine SWCPs, and 24 other characteristics including demographics, socio-economic factors, risk factors and costs of production. Sustainable soil and water conservation practices (SWCPs) in sub-Saharan Africa such as Ghana are important because they have positive effects on yield, increase sustainability of farming, stop degradation and reduce soil erosion. The adoption of sustainable soil and water conservation practices in the agricultural industry of Ghana has been variable. This study aims to explain differences in farmer adoption of SWCPs, by assessing factors that vary with the number of different SWCPs used by farmers. Hence, the Poisson model was used. The results show that farmer's household size, farm size, access to credit services and formal training of maize farmer have a positive significant association with the number of soil and water conservation practices adopted by maize farmers while distance to nearest output market, distance to input center, access to extension services, and risk of pest and diseases have a negative significant association with the number of soil and water conservation practices adopted by maize farmers at 5% significance level. The study concludes that any further research in Techiman Municipality on soil and water conservation practices should acknowledge the mixture of personal and demographic, institutional, socio-economic and risk factors. This suggests that agricultural policies formulated by the government should be aimed at supporting maize farmers to have access to extension service contact for frequent disseminating of agricultural technology information which is likely to increase the rate of adoption of soil and water conservation practices.

E-Agriculture Reviewed: Theories, Concepts and Trends

One of the foremost sectors that have shaped the socioeconomic development of most countries is agriculture. Over the years, the benefits accruing from the widespread adoption and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in agriculture includes increasing people’s knowledge and practice of agricultural processes and hence improving agricultural production and linkages to remunerative markets, food security, national economies amongst many other benefits. A field of activity related to the use of modern information and communication tools and technologies that increase agricultural productivity and make available information that is relevant to agricultural research, planning, extension, production, monitoring, marketing and trade is referred to as e-agriculture. In this paper, we present a methodical review of theories, concepts and trends of e-agriculture. Keywords— Development, e-Agriculture, Globalization, Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

Farmer Cooperatives’ Intention to Adopt Agricultural Information Technology—Mediating Effects of Attitude

Based on the technology acceptance model and technology–organization–environment framework, this study has developed a new model to explain the adoption of agricultural information technology (AIT) by farmer cooperatives from the combination perspective of individual and organization using four factors: cooperatives’ factors, environmental factors, technological factors, and leaders’ attitude towards AIT. Data was collected from a survey of farmer cooperatives and was analyzed using structural equation modelling. The model showed a good fit with findings indicating that the cooperatives’ and environmental factors positively influence the intentions of farmer cooperatives to adopt AIT. Again, the results depict that the technological factors have no significant effect. Leaders’ attitude towards AIT has a mediating effect on the relationships between the environmental, the cooperatives’, as well as the technological factors and the intentions to adopt AIT. The results will guide promotional strategies by technology providers and help government agencies better optimize policies to promote widespread use of AIT.

Awareness and Use of E-Resources Among Public Extension Personnel in Anambra State, Nigeria

The study assessed the awareness and use of e-resources among public extension personnel in the area. Stratified sampling technique was used in selecting respondents from each cadre of the Anambra State Agricultural Development Programme (ASADEP). A total of sixty-nine (69) agricultural extension staff was used for the study. Findings show the major e-resource tool that was available to the majority (94.2%) of extension staff in the area was mobile phone, while 62.3% indicated that computer was available to them. The majority (69.6%) of the respondents were each aware of Facebook, and email, while 56.5% were aware of twitter. Among those who were aware of email, the majority (59.4%) indicated they used it while 43.5% of those that were aware of Facebook indicated they used it. Results show that 15.9% of the respondents indicated they used e-journal in exchanging information on pests and diseases, 10.1% exchanged weather and climate information on e-mail, while 11.6% each indicated they used email to exchange information on farm inputs and market prices. On the other hand, 10.1% each used e-journal and e-mail to exchange information on processing methods. The study concluded by drawing attention to the very low adoption of e-resources in extension service delivery in the area. Efforts should be made by both federal and state governments to provide enabling technological environment and training opportunities for extension personnel in order to improve e-extension which is a veritable alternative towards solving the issues of dearth in extension staff that has been a persistent problem plaguing extension service in the country.Keywords: Agricultural extension, e-resources utilisation, Information and Communication Technology, Anambra State

Information technology as a factor of sustainable development of Serbian agriculture

Trend of population growth and the need for greater production of health-safe food, on the one hand, and environmental protection on the other hand, affect the change of production technologies in agriculture. Challenges of modern agriculture are reflected in the growth of productivity, but also the long-term sustainability of the agricultural sector. It is indisputable that information technology (IT) has a direct impact on the productivity of agriculture, and as the ultimate goal leads to the growth of the profit of agricultural producers. Precise agriculture, the application of state-of-the-art technical systems for satellite guidance and automatic management, as well as the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) lead to yield growth, but also affect the rational use of inputs, which leads to reduction of adverse effects on the environment. Accordingly, the implementation of new technologies in agriculture is an important factor in improving agricultural production, as well as the potential for sustainable development of this sector. The units of observation in this research are Serbia and all countries of the European Union. The aim of this research is to determine the position of Serbia in relation to the countries of the European Union in terms of the dimensions of sustainable development of agriculture, as well as to consider the current level of application of information technologies in the agriculture of these countries. The paper analyzes a set of indicators of economic, ecological and social sustainability and their connection with the implementation of information technologies in agriculture. The results of the research indicate that the current application of information technologies in Serbia's agriculture, compared to EU countries, is modest, primarily due to the unfavorable educational structure of agricultural producers, as well as limited financial resources, which significantly impedes the process of IT implementation.

Application of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in Wireless Sensor Networks for Smart Agriculture

Agriculture is one of the main economic industries of a country. Application of information technologies in agriculture, smart agriculture, aims to realize precision control of irrigation, fertilizer, diseases, and insect pests prevention in the growing of crops. For the sake of obtaining the interest data, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are used to collect the interest data in the farm field and send the obtained data to the servers via wireless communication. Since the WSNs usually operate in the unlicensed spectrum, the available resource elements (REs) are scarce especially when a large number of sensor nodes are deployed in the farm field. To accommodate more sensor nodes and prolong the lifetime of the WSNs in agriculture, relay-aided non-orthogonal multiple access is introduced into the uplink transmission stage of the direct transmission from the sensor nodes to the sink node. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can transmit multiple symbols simultaneously on the same RE by splitting them in the power domain and distinguish them according to diverse power levels of different symbols. The average sum data rate and outage probability of the relay-aided NOMA in uplink transmission are theoretically analyzed. The numerical simulation results show that the WSNs with relay-aided NOMA outperforms the traditional OMA scheme in uplink transmission in WSNs in agriculture.

Developing Agriculture Land Mapping using Rapid Application Development (RAD): A Case Study from Indonesia

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in agriculture has become one of the steps to improve agricultural efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, and also expected to encourage the creation of Precision Agriculture. Precision agriculture has an impact on the efficiency of operational costs to increase margins in the production of agricultural products using ICTs. One of the problems that often arise in agriculture is related to the management of agricultural land in each farmer group area. This information is closely related to the needs of agricultural production facilities and infrastructure, such as the need for fertilizers, seeds, and other resources. Web Mapping System is one of the systems to assist in land or area mapping. In this study, the Web Mapping System is expected to be used to help at agricultural land mapping, owned by farmer members of farmer groups. The developed system will store spatial data from farmland members and farmer groups. The Web Mapping System was developed using the Rapid Application Development (RAD) method, where there are several iterative processes. The result of this study is the Web Mapping System for agricultural land. With this application, farmers can find out the status of the land being cultivated or owned. In addition, the Web Mapping System can record the status of the existing land in a farmer group and the need for agricultural production facilities and infrastructure. Further, the Web Mapping System also provides information in a dashboard that can help farmer groups to manage the land owned by each farmer who is a member of the group.

ICT Based Agro-Advisory Services in Nepal

The world has already witnessed the rapid surge in use of Information Technology (IT) in agriculture and understands its effectiveness through the miracles we have achieved. In such context, agriculture extension and advisory service in Nepal can be heavily boosted with the help of most effective and affordable information and communication technologies (ICTs). With smart phones, internet services, mobile networks, televisions and radio widespread all over the country, they can prove to be a promising means for dissipation of information in rapidly altering and modernizing farming system of Nepal. This paper aims to explore the current scenario, role and effectiveness of ICTs in agro-advisory services of Nepal and to point out salient issues hampering the development of ICT. Information and findings are based on available literature, articles and publications and they suggest that ICTs can play a crucial role in linking extension, research and farmers and in the overall development of agriculture especially in the context of developing country like Nepal. The potential contribution of ICT in agriculture extension is still fully unexplored and they can be effective means for providing timely and relevant information to farmers residing in every corner of the country.

Closing the extension gap: Information and communication technology in sustainable agriculture

As the information revolution sweeps through the agricultural sector, extension professionals may be lagging behind their clients in the use of information and communication technology (ICT) such as social media, which could be a valuable tool for outreach and education. We surveyed sustainable agriculture stakeholders in California — extension professionals, county agricultural commissioners, and members of farm bureaus and producer groups — to measure their ICT behavior and attitudes. Drawing on diffusion of innovation theory, we characterized the innovation attributes of ICT that may influence the adoption and use of new technology among extension professionals. We also studied their demographic characteristics to establish whether there was a connection with ICT use. The main perceived benefit of ICT was that it can quickly reach larger, more diverse and more distant audiences. The perceived challenges included lack of professional support, the potential for misinformation on social media platforms, and the time requirements and technical complexity of technology use. Extension professionals experienced these challenges more than other sustainable agriculture stakeholders, creating a technology gap between extension professionals and their clientele. An ICT community of practice and clear organizational guidelines for measuring and reporting performance relating to ICT might help extension professionals close the gap.

Smart farming IoT platform based on edge and cloud computing

Precision Agriculture (PA), as the integration of information, communication and control technologies in agriculture, is growing day by day. The Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing paradigms offer advances to enhance PA connectivity. Nevertheless, their usage in this field is usually limited to specific scenarios of high cost, and they are not adapted to semi-arid conditions, or do not cover all PA management in an efficient way. For this reason, we propose a flexible platform able to cope with soilless culture needs in full recirculation greenhouses using moderately saline water. It is based on exchangeable low-cost hardware and supported by a three-tier open source software platform at local, edge and cloud planes. At the local plane, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) interact with crop devices to gather data and perform real-time atomic control actions. The edge plane of the platform is in charge of monitoring and managing main PA tasks near the access network to increase system reliability against network access failures. Finally, the cloud platform collects current and past records and hosts data analytics modules in a FIWARE deployment. IoT protocols like Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) or Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) are used to communicate with CPS, while Next Generation Service Interface (NGSI) is employed for southbound and northbound access to the cloud. The system has been completely instantiated in a real prototype in frames of the EU DrainUse project, allowing the control of a real hydroponic closed system through managing software for final farmers connected to the platform.

Neglecting spatial autocorrelation causes underestimation of the error of sugarcane yield models

With the increased application of information technology in agriculture, data is being produced and used in an unprecedented scale. While these advances, combined with machine learning techniques, benefited yield modeling, most of the current literature about data-driven yield modeling has not yet accounted for potential sources of correlation in data, assuming independence between samples. In this scenario, random sampling can lead to correlated samples across sets being used for model evaluation. We implemented a spatially-aware protocol and compared it with the naive approach of assuming independence between samples. The protocols were applied through all the model development pipeline: data splitting for hold-out sets, feature selection, cross-validation for model adjustment and model evaluation. Three different machine learning techniques were used to create models in each protocol. The resulting models were evaluated both in the validation set created by each protocol and in a manually created independent set. This independent set ensured there was no auto-correlation between the samples used for modeling. We showed that assuming independence when modeling yield leads to underestimating model errors and overfit during model adjustment. Despite better error tracking, the model with the smallest error in the test set was not the model with the smallest validation error, suggesting overfit for the model selection. While this effect was small for the spatially-aware protocol, the effect was a lot stronger in the naive protocol. Future efforts in yield modeling should address the effect of spatial auto-correlation and other potential sources of correlation to improve correctness and robustness of the results.

MONITORING KELEMBABAN TANAH PERTANIAN MENGGUNAKAN SOIL MOISTURE SENSOR FC-28 DAN ARDUINO UNO

Land as the main factor in agriculture must be considered as well as possible in order to provide the expected results. One of them is by using computer and internet technology to monitor soil moisture. Soil moisture is one of the environmental factors that affect plant growth. One of the innovations in information and communication technology in agriculture is the use of the Internet of Things. By using the Internet of Things, it can be done to monitor soil moisture that is used as a planting medium for horticultural crops. knowing the value of soil moisture will be very useful to be able to determine the steps or handling of the soil. The test results show that the measurement of soil moisture using a soil moisture sensor can work well and display information on the value of soil moisture. Based on the results and analysis, it can be concluded that the results of monitoring the soil moisture monitoring system can already be used to monitor agricultural land. So that the results of this study are expected to help farmers in making decisions based on information about the value of soil moisture that has been obtained. The final result obtained from the reading of the sensor value is wet, moist and dry according to the set value of the Analog Data. That is wet condition when getting output with lower limit range of 150 and upper limit of 339, humid condition when getting output with lower limit range 340 upper limit of 475, dry condition when getting sensor value with lower limit range is 476 and upper limit is 1023.

Research and application of information service platform for agricultural economic cooperation organization based on Hadoop cloud computing platform environment: taking agricultural and fresh products as an example

At present, information technology has become to promote economic development and social progress is the most crucial technical factors, with the application of biotechnology and information technology in agriculture on the deepening of modern agriculture and information agriculture will be even more rapid development. Agricultural information system, as the carrier of agricultural information technology, plays a more and more important role in promoting the sustained, stable and efficient development of agriculture. Hadoop is a free open source cloud platform and a software framework that allows distributed processing of large data on cluster computers. It is a reliable, efficient and scalable cloud platform, which is suitable for simulation test in the laboratory environment. In this paper, the design and implementation of agricultural economic cooperation organization information service platform for agricultural fresh products and cloud computing technology based on Hadoop is studied. This paper mainly introduces the cloud service platform based on Hadoop, and analyzes the application of cloud services in agricultural informatization. This paper mainly designs and implements the design of agricultural fresh products information service platform based on Hadoop cloud computing platform, including architecture, knowledge base, platform interface and main functional modules.

A precíziós gazdálkodás kilátásai Magyarországon

For agriculture, precision farming means the future by increasing incomes and reducing environmental loads at the same time Precision management produces a surplus in yield, revenue, result, but not immediately. The additional income potential is expected to increase by 20% to 50%. Farms mostly introduce precision farming in order to relieve workers. However, many farmers are afraid of the use of new technologies, but the use of information technology in agriculture will be unavoidable. Technology is fundamentally expensive, not even widespread, and farmers use only a few technology elements. Moreover, following the precautionary principle technology used in farming covers only a part of their agricultural land. So farms need to learn to produce more precisely than before in a knowledge-based manner.

Information and Communication Technology in Agriculture

Agriculture in the country has entered a new phase-increase in productivity is sought to be achieved in ways that are sustainable and that do not impact the environment adversely. Simultaneously, the villages too are being transformed with new businesses. Greater use of information and communication technology (mobile phones, internet, and satellite maps of natural resources) is a growing part of this change. This research paper deals with concept of ICT and its application in agriculture and rural development.

Causes and Effect of Occupational Stress and Coping on Performance with Special Reference to Length of Service: An Empirical Study Using Multinomial Logistic Regression Approach

The manuscript presents the outcome of our research study on effect of occupational stress, coping strategies adopted, length of service and their relation with performance of employees. A survey using an undisguised questionnaire was carried on the employees working in the International Agricultural Research Institute and Information Technology sector in Indian Metro, Hyderabad. The data from the 756 respondents, including 381 women and 375 men responses was used for analysis. The occupational stress was measured using 14 stress causing components—workload, co-workers, peer, peer-support, role ambiguity, role conflict, career, harassment, psychological factors, physiological factors, behavioural factors, social support, job control, approach coping and voidance coping, length of service on dependent factor Performance of the respondents from the International Agricultural Research Institute and IT sector. The effect on dependent variable performance with the independent factors length of service was divided into 4 groups in 1 - 5 years, 6 - 10 years, 11 - 15 years and >15 years of service, occupational stress factors, coping strategies were measured. The overall C-Alpha value is 0.92 for overall components, 0.91 for occupational stress components, 0.92 for overall coping, 0.69 for performance; whereas 0.69 for avoidance coping 0.69 for approach coping. The likely hood odds rations (ORs) were estimated to predict degree of association of occupational stress, coping strategies, length of service with performance of the employees, gender and age differences.

A Reversible Information Hiding Method Based on HEVC

With the rapid development of agricultural information technology, the security of agricultural information data has become a hot issue. The safety of ensuring the transmission of important agricultural information on the Internet in agricultural informatization was studied in this paper. By hiding the content and existence of information, the purpose of secure transmission of information can be achieved. HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), the latest video coding standard jointly developed for ISO/IEC and ITU-T. An optimized differential expansion information hiding method based on HEVC video is proposed. In order to enable the algorithm achieving large-capacity steganography and restoring the original video without distortion, the motion vector coefficient pair is taken as the carrier, the information hiding is performed by reducing the difference expansion coefficient. And the least significant bit of the motion vector after steganography is replaced by the secret information to achieve double embedding. On the extraction side, after the complete extraction of information, the original video can be restored without distortion. Experimental results show that this method is compared with the difference expansion method, the PSNR of the video after steganography is increased by 4db, and the bit rate is reduced by 0.7. It can be seen that this method has good visual imperceptibility. It is important that the embedded capacity has been increased by nearly 35% than DE method. The purpose of large capacity steganography is achieved. In the extraction end, the embedded secret information can be accurately extracted and the original video can be recovered without distortion. This is of great significance for the secure transmission of important agricultural information.