Farm machinery management information system

Management of farming operations is currently rapidly changing toward a systems perspective integrating the surroundings in terms of environmental impact, public entities and documentation of quality and growing conditions. The latest developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the prevailing lack of interoperability between agricultural tractors, implements and on-board computers has led to the development of ISO 11783 (ISOBUS) international standard for securing a more effective communication between these entities. Precision agriculture requires an increasing amount of information in order to be sufficiently managed and the abilities of the ISOBUS protocol is a significant step toward this goal as it will provide a wealth of automated data acquisition for improving the management of crop production. However, there is an urgent need to organize and specify the pathways of this large amount of information as prerequisites for subsequently turning it into knowledge and decision support. The aim of this study was to analyze and design a future farm machinery management information system to handle tractor and implement data together with the interactions with their surroundings. Soft systems methodology was used to analyze the human activities and to identify user requirements in relation to the use of farm machinery and the management of the information generated and pertaining to the tractor and the farm implements. The empirical data to extract this information was gathered from 30 targeted interviews with tractor operators and farm managers located in Greece and Denmark, and pertaining to questions about the optimal use of farm machinery data and tractor-implement performance. A rich picture of the whole system was developed and from that a conceptual model that infers to daily operations with the tractor, implement and the interactions with the surroundings. The conceptual models were developed for both conventional farm machinery and agricultural robots. The conceptual model function will serve as a blueprint for further development of required sensors, communication technology, and information processing capabilities. The developed conceptual models were tested and validated with 15 farm managers from the initial reviewing panel in order to reveal supplemental additions and concerns. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.