Introduction- Information Systems in Agriculture

Agriculture is a knowledge-intensive industry. Value-chain actors need to obtain and process financial, climatic, technical, market and regulatory information to manage their activities (Just & Zilberman, 2002).

Though it may not be considered as an aspect of agriculture which has been isolated as an autonomous study area, Information systems and management can be considered as a productive resource, potentially limiting and influencing the efficiency of production, marketing, processing and administration in Agriculture. (Blackie, 1979).  At the production level, the role of information hardly has been defined and in practice the processing of raw data to provide useful information is informal and crude. (Blackie, 1979)

Agricultural information interacts with and influences agricultural productivity in a variety of ways. It informs decisions regarding land, labour, livestock, capital and management. Relevant, reliable and timely information and knowledge dissemination improves Agricultural productivity. (Demiryurek, et al., 2008)

This Blog analyses and compares current information systems and their applicability in agriculture.

The blog, being part of the author’s academic work at the Salford Business School focuses on the information systems in the various stages of the agriculture value chain.

Information systems in agricultural consists of subsystems (components), information related processes (generation, transformation, storage, retrieval, integration, diffusion and utilisation), system mechanisms (interfaces and networks) and system operations (control and management) (Demiryurek, et al., 2008)

In defending the usefulness of the soft systems approach for analysing agriculture information systems, Röling defines it as “a system in which agricultural information is generated, transformed, consolidated, received and fed back... to underpin knowledge utilisation by agricultural producers.” (Röling, 1988)

The establishment and operationalization of Information systems are expensive and where, owing to development of the industry or change in the type of decision which must be made or advances in the technology of information systems, inefficiencies have become obvious and regular re-evaluation of the systems is a matter that should be considered. (Blackie, 1979).

The main motivational factor to select an investment is its profitability. However, “difficulties arise when this criterion is applied to investments in management information systems (MIS), because the impact of MIS on farm performance is unclear” (Verstegen, et al., 1995).

Over the years, Farm management information systems (FMIS) have steadily increased in their level of sophistication as they have included new technologies with Internet connectivity being the latest addition. However, few FMIS have used the full capabilities of the Internet, and the emerging concept of precision agriculture has little or no support in the current commercially available FMIS (Nikkilä, et al., 2010)

References

Blackie, M. J., 1979. Information Systems for Agriculture. New York: Applied Science.

Demiryurek, K., Erdem, H., Vedat, C. & Atasever, S. a. O. U., 2008. Agricultural information systems and communication networks: the case of dairy farmers in the Samsun province of Turkey. Inforation Research, 13(2).

Just, D. & Zilberman, D., 2002. Information Systems in Agriculture. ARE Update, 6(1).

Nikkilä, R., Seilonen, I. & Koskinen, K., 2010. Software architecture for farm management information systems in precision agriculture. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 70(2), pp. 328-336.

Röling, N., 1988. Extension science: information system in agricultural development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press..

Verstegen, A. J., Huirne, B. R., Dijkhuizen, A. A. & Kleijnenb, J. P., 1995. Economic value of management information systems in agriculture: a review of evaluation approaches. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 13(4), pp. 273-288.