Feaibility Study

The rapid developments in the area of farm management information systems include the increasing interest and requirements for better information on farms coupled with the necessity for improved record keeping. The requirement for improved information increases further in a more open and competitive world of agriculture and farming. Changes continue to take place in an array of regulations governing the way food is produced and in future in the environment within which it will be produced.

As information technology continues to develop at an ever increasing rate, access to IT technology by farmers becomes easier and for some products and services, a little cheaper. However, there are new technologies interfacing with the sector in influencing the control of many aspects of the farm such as the Internet, developing Intranets, mapping, robotics and more sophisticated communication systems. Electronics in agriculture in all its forms will change the control and management systems in very significant ways if we adopt the technologies.

The structure of Agriculture and farming is changing radically. The role of this feasibility study is to look at the adoption of a computer based management system in the university farm.The specific objectives of this paper is to examine the adoption of computer technology and software systems on the farm.

Why should the Information System be Changed?

Adoption of computer technology to assist in the management of the farm is driven by many reasons of which some are:

Changes in technology and access to information technology continues to grow causing demands for its use in all types of work.

To meet the increasing need and interest to keep better records on farm.

Computers have become less expensive and better understood as to capability and the benefits of access to the technology have become better known.

The range of software systems suited and appropriate to farm enterprises continues to increase and are competitively priced.

Computer-generated information leads to better farm management practice.

To increase productivity, quality and efficiency.

Need to expand the business to carter for expected increse in market demand.

The Problem with the Existing System

Manual record systems, as found on the university farm, only provides data which conversion to information only occurs after tedious calculations and analysis. Where computer technology is available, this data is easily processed into the required information. Therefore serious gains in terms of time and in timeliness of information will be made. Manual records for data capture purposes on the farm will still be required but they require more attention and involve more time and effort. Therefore attention needs to be given to improve methods for farm data capture for data to have value i.e it must be accurate, timely, complete and relevant.

The acquisition of computer based technology and software systems on the University farm represents just one aspect of the farm-based management information systems and it`s arrival, although essential and useful, may be distorting in certain aspects. The inclusion of the new technology on the farm should not just represent the placement of new equipment on to the farm. However it should be seen as just one part of the existing farm MIS. The pre-occupation with the "new technology" may displace the appropriate focus of an examination of an enterprise MIS away from the whole farm MIS.

Replacement of the existing manual system with a newly computerised system may do little to improve the management of the farm. Improvement will only be achieved if sufficient attention is paid to method of improving data capture and carrying out data analysis. The issue of insuring that quality, accurate data are collected in the first instance must be the farm management`s responsibility and is part of ensuring that management will be effective no matter how the data will be processed.

Final Recommendation

Good data and information will serve the farmer well in important elements in the process of farm business management. These processes include planning, organising, control and decision-making. Planning is an activity that has traditionally been carried out in the past and in the absence of computer technology. It has been a tedious but productive process requiring considerable input of time, calculation and discussion between farmers and their advisors.

There are currently many forms of planning affecting the farm business including business planning, farm retirement planning, tax planning and estate planning among others. Organising short term or day-to-day operations on farms benefit from short term planning actions on the allocation of resources to various departments, enabling effective scheduling of operations to take place in practice.

Technical feasibility

There are many software packages available that can be used. Some are tailor made to suit the independent needs of the individual organisation. It is advisable that the software packages that farm intends to acquire (as a foundation the new computerised information systems) should have been subject to an independent evaluation process prior to being introduced. Computer software systems and packages that are now available can be identified from the Internet and also at trade and agricultural shows . Studies reported on dairy software evaluation include Land O`Lakes (1994) in which they examined dairy software systems in detail while Olsen (1990) studied accounting software. The functional needs of the farm in information terms need to be met by the software. Modification to