A Mobile Real-Time Data Collection and Analysis System for Farm Management
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Date
2006-06
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Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Food and agriculture is Ohio’s most important industry and at the heart of that industry is the business of cattle farming. While the size of this industry in Ohio is large, a significant percentage of the farms are small family-owned and run. These farms typically hover closely around the line that separates profitable farms from those that lose money. Using principles from the Balanced Scorecard, a management technique new to the farming industry, and the appropriate use of technology, we seek to assist farmers in making better day-to-day management decisions for their farms with the expectation that this micro-level approach to managing will tip the balance towards profitability.
Inherent to management is the process of data collection. Farmers need to collect data while they work, and to do that, data collection software must be intuitive, user friendly, and fit into the process of the workflow. Further, farming is a technology-unfriendly environment. In response to these requirements, we have built a Personal Data Assistant (PDA)-based mobile, handheld application specifically designed for farm management. This technology will facilitate the process of collecting and analyzing data for farmers. Consequently, they will be able to make more accurate management decisions about the farm in real-time as they work. The application has been designed for easy use and is unobtrusively integrated into the farmer’s environment and workflow.
In addition to considering usability and human-computing interface issues with such a management application, the overall architecture, was also considered. Recognizing that management is a common function across the domain of small farms, the objective was to design an extensible architecture that would lend itself to building micro-management applications for other farm operations.
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Keywords
farm management, PDA software, management system, software design