Publications

The purpose of this report is to analyze external drivers that could have a significant impact on knowledge management methods and on farming systems as a whole for the next 25 years.

This is the first year report (Jan to Dec 2008) of the FP7 project FutureFarm (212117) ‘Integration
of Farm Management Information Systems to support real-time management decisions and
compliance of management standards’

D.1.2.2 analyzes stakeholders’ opinion about external drivers, which was  realized on the base of interviews provided by project partners on four experimental farms (mainly in language of stakeholders for better understanding of the problem). 

There will be two main parts:
 - Stakeholders opinion about influences of external drivers on their production
 - Conclusion from stakeholders opinion

The stakeholder’s opinion was based on interviews on four experimental farms and was based on the principles of SWOT analysis.

The objectives of deliverable 3.1 are to identify the scope of a farm management information system (FMIS) and identifies the conceptual system framework, which will guide the evolutionary process of analysing the information flow; define the databases, the knowledge encoding, the requirements for on-line control, etc. The specific output from deliverable 3.1 becomes the preliminary scope and system boundaries and will function as the starting point from which the expectations and constraining requirements to the system can be further explored.

The  report  D.1.1.1  defines  an  initial  list  of  external  drivers  that  will  have  a  big  impact  on knowledge management methods and on farming system as a whole in the next 25 years. These external drivers will be analyzed deeply within the next four month on the basis of analysis of literature, but also base on  the SWOT analysis  realized directly on  the concrete  farms.

The future farm should be complied with standards to ensure competitiveness in international markets as well as sound environmental standards. A number of standards are available at Global, European, National, Regional and Terrestrial level. The standards are divided into voluntary and compulsory standards and each farm; region; country has differently implemented the directives, regulations and other standards that they have to comply with.

The outcome of this work package includes a description of a farm management information system which allows more intelligent decisions about the use of different input sources, treatments and information management systems (incl. precision farming systems) for a number of crop rotation systems. To achieve this, it was decided to assess the cost structure and potential benefit for these crop rotation systems for different technologies. Focus is on commonly produced crops in different European regions including wheat, rape seed, sugar beets, maize and other cereals, cotton or other crops.

The report D.1.2.1 analysis focuses on the examples  of agriculture knowledge management methods mainly in countries where the testing farms are located. Still, this study compares these systems also with other solutions available in the market. It  evaluates the currently used technologies at the agriculture management. The study analyses examples of two basic types of current farm management systems; desktop based and Web based. Part of this study is also the assessment of user satisfaction with the currently used systems.

Many farmers claim that their main purpose is to make money, but that is too simplistic. Nowadays sustainability and environmental issues are becoming more important. Practices are the management options that apply to a particular sector.

This report concludes analysis of reports 1.1.1., 1.1.2, 1.2.1 and 1.2.2 and defines vision of future knowledge management system, which has to be  designed and developed by Future Farm. The main focus of recommendation is on a) integration among different levels of farm management systems and b) on the supported tasks that will be required (according to the previously analyzed external drivers and their influence on the three levels of farm management and hence farm knowledge management).
The report defines three levels of farm management:
 - Macro or external management