Thursday 5th July
9:00Rural
Rural empowerment through access to knowledge: a comparison of two projects on two continents. J. SwindelIt is a generally held view that one of the pre-requisites to the alleviation of rural poverty is equitable access to resources. One of the most fundamental of resources is knowledge. The exponential development of ICT capabilities and the growth and ease of access to the internet has given a potential global access to knowledge which was inconceivable just 15 years ago. This paper compares two projects, one in Honduras and one in India, which both tried to realise this potential, but with great variation in success and longevity. From this comparison, recommendations will be developed for appropriate methodologies for developing knowledge infrastructures in poor rural communities. / An evaluation of ICT and Internet use by Spanish agricultural Co-operatives. Contribution to minimize digital divide. J.F. Juliá, G. García-Martínez & E. Silvestre
Following other research studies developed by the authors on the topic of the evaluation of the digital divide in Spanish rural areas, this paper focuses on the role that agricultural co-operatives are said to perform in the use and the development of the ICT in the rural areas. The research reviews the following variables,
1. Presence of agricultural co-operatives in the Internet.
2. Hosting and management of web pages.
3. Internal structure.
4. Analysis of contents.
5. Information provided in relation with R+D policy, economic information, and food safety. / Can Videoconferencing Help Rural Sustainability? Z. Havlicek, E. Silerova & A. M. Westcott
The contribution of this research has three parts. The first part focuses on the analysis of the basic functionalities of different videoconference systems. The second part presents some practical experiences in using different videoconference systems in the NODES project. The third part is focused on videoconferences within the framework of the ELLS universities network.
Our first experiences are very positive. Actual equipment for videoconferencing is not expensive, everybody, everywhere can use an internet connection and participate on a videoconference and sharing of information in this way can help rural sustainability.
9:00Business – ICT adoption – user view
Adoption of ICT in horticulture: Confronting scientists’ opinions with practice in Flanders, Belgium. N. Taragola & D. Van LierdeThe 5th EFITA/WCCA conference indicated that ICT adoption in agriculture remains a universal and significant problem. The objective of this paper is to confront scientists’ opinions with the opinions and behaviour of horticultural growers in Flanders, Belgium. Data was collected at a sample of 208 horticultural businesses in Flanders in 2005. The results reveal that 90.9% of the growers own a PC and X²-tests show a statistically significant association with business size, age and education level of the firm manager. The results indicate some of the factors preventing ICT adoption and indicate the use of ICT for management purposes is not fully exploited / What are the needs for agricultural software? An analysis of experiences and requirements of agricultural consultants. R. M. Sodtke & M. Gottschick
With the aim of evaluating ecological and economical impacts of the reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the New Agricultural Policy in Germany (Agrarwende) a set of policy scenarios with different options for the future was developed. Scenarios were analysed using the multifunctional evaluation model MODAM to predict changes in land use and agricultural production as well as microeconomic and ecological implications within the Ostprignitz-Ruppin region in Germany. Examined scenarios reflect alternative options for implementing CAP reform specifications and reveal a spectrum of policy options. Results are a basis for recommendations for improving the incentive scheme and enhancing and upgrading the model functions. / Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Adoption: Results of a Survey of the England and Wales Farming Community. M. M. Gibbons & A. L. Offer
Farming is a knowledge-intensive business where ICT can help enhance farm efficiency and productivity. While farming has been slow to adopt ICT, a 2006 survey of farmers in England and Wales suggests this is no longer the case and that farmers have recently caught up with the wider community. The survey contains information on computer and internet use by region and by sector and with a samplesize of over 2,100 farms, the results are a reliable indication of the current state of IT within the farming community in England and Wales. This paper will examine the relationships between the nature of farming businesses and their use and attitude to IT, and attitudes towards applications such as computerised decision support tools.
Development Of Information And Communication Technologies: A.-E. Lévêque , T.G. Kelly & Y. Michelin The aim of this study was to give a view of current ICT usage among Irish farmers and how they will use technology to make better decisions in the future.
It was found more profitable farmers are more involved in ICT use than less profitable farmers. Knowing the benefits of getting involved in the network and risks of keeping away, and taking into account Irish regional differences, a growing Digital Divide was identified.
The use of ICT by farmers reflected a view of the Internet as a source of information rather than a support or information exchange tool as farmers are happy enough with current efficient and easier ways to exchange information such as phone, travelling to agency and text messaging. / Adoption of Information and Communication Technologies by farming households in Haryana, India. I. Glover
The quality of life of individuals, families and communities both in rural and urban areas is being affected in numerous different ways due to processes of modernization and globalization including the availability of numerous Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The present study was undertaken with the objective of ascertaining the extent of adoption of ICTs by farm families. This paper describes the results based on studies carried out in Haryana state, India, a state known to be on fast tract of development since its creation in 1966. In a study, on a sample of 250 rural families drawn on a land owing basis from the two agro-climatic zones, four districts and eight villages.
9:00Business – Internet based systems
Farmer Driven Web Developments. S. HardingThe paper provides a brief history of Cattle Information Services (CIS), followed by a description of the developmental strategy and milk recording web development.
The presentation will describe the many features of the farmers’ web site, using screenshots as visuals. These include reports, herd management section, Day2Day action reports, data entry, medicine book, fertility chart, service performance graph and area data analysis. / Web based Expert System for Diagnosis of Micro-Macro Nutrients Deficiencies in Crops. S.S.Patil, U.B.Angadi, B.V.Dhandra A.G.Shankar, M.Shivamurthy and B.N.Sharmila
After moisture stress, one of the most important limiting factors for crop productivity is nutrient stress. The crop yield losses are estimated to an extent of 10-20% with or without- visual symptoms (“Hidden hunger”). Of the several nutrients, P, Fe, Zn, B & Mg are reported to be in short supply for plant growth and productivity globally. Especially the low level of Fe. We propose a web-based expert system for diagnosis of plant macro and micronutrients disorders in crops. This system aims to provide a guide to identification of deficiency of nutrient in crops, disorders in leaves, stems and roots of a plant. The experience acquired in the development of this expert system as well as its future works is also presented / Electronic Collaboration Platforms for Communities. M. Pankiewicz, M. Fritz & G. Schiefer
One of the critical success factors for the future development of the agri-food sector is the increased integration of enterprises and other stakeholders in horizontal and vertical communities.
The paper will discuss ongoing research on the conceptualization, design and testing of online communities that provide the functionalities that might improve co-operation in the different (horizontal and vertical) dimensions.
It integrates initiatives from the area of collaborative working environments, sometimescaptured under the heading electronic community house and discussions on critical success factors from agri-food business research.
First prototypes build on an integration of freely available software modules and demonstrate the capability of todays level of development if one has a clear conceptual base on which to build.
Using Internet to booster growth in the Nigeria's food and agricultural sector - S. Aigbe
The Nigerian food and agricultural sector grew on average 5-7%
over the past five years mainly due to Government restrictions on food
imports and increased investment in agriculture.
A higher growth rate is possible if fast, reliable, and cost efficient internet access is provided throughout the country. This has the potential to re-engineer Nigerian agriculture and maximise food production, improve food
self-sufficiency and security, increase output for industrial raw material utilisation and provide employment and economic growth.
To achieve this the agricultural extension services have to be revitalised through the empowerment of farm extension workers with internet skills and agricultural information systems should be established to provide support for planning, production, storage and the distribution of agricultural products. / Possibilities and purposes of Internet usage: authenticity and fake of Italian food product. M. Platania & D. Privitera
Counterfeiting is a growing and increasingly dangerous phenomenon. The latest Customs statistics published by the European Commission show that counterfeiting and piracy continue to be a alarming threat in Europe. The agrofood italian production, famous all over the world for their qualitative characteristics. The aim of the paper was to investigate the level of the “Italian Sounding” of the products sold via e-commerce, which often leads consumers to believe they are buying genuine “Italian” goods The carrying out of the study foresees, initially, to consider the volumes of counterfeit commodities to world level. Subsequently the main features of the companies using the internet an e- commerce for selling typical Italian fake products will be analyzed. It will finally be tried to define the degree of imitation on each site analyzed.
9:00Business – GIS/Precision farming
eREPS - harnessing ICT to increase the efficiency and accuracy of farm surveying in Ireland. N. Cartera, M. GibsonThe Teagasc REPS Planning Service is the single largest REPS planning agency in the country, servicing over 40 percent of total REPS participants. The vast majority of the remaining share of the market is serviced by members of the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA).
To date, over 31,000 clients have been registered on the eREPS system. Currently there are 650 users using the system.
The eREPS system has produced over 300,000 individual maps and reports since it went live. Currently the system prints on average 800 maps and reports per day.
The new eREPS system allows REPS Planners to focus on planning a farm rather than mapping and measuring. The system produces a quality printed REPS plan for the client. / Dynamic Data Integration of Agricultural Emergency Resources with Google Earth and Google Map. J. Xinand P. Hu
Agriculture is under constant threat of natural disasters, pests etc. In the case of agricultural emergency, one of the challenges is to provide accurate geo-referencing data to assist emergency response. Google Earth and Google Map provide a high degree of data integration with client data. The technology provides users a dynamic and visual means to analyze data and make informed decisions in the event of agricultural emergency. This paper descries an approach to dynamically integrate state agricultural emergency resources into Google Earth and Google Map and discusses ways to improve data mapping accuracy and system performance. The result indicates Google Earth is a cost saving and effective means of mapping agricultural emergency resources. / Web-Based GIS Consulting Portal with Crop-Land Suitability. P.K.S.C. Jayasinghe, T. Machida
The purpose of this study is to develop an interactive web based GIS consulting portal with crop-land suitability analysis, which provides information for Tomato and Cabbage cultivation in Sri Lanka. Soil, topography, temperature, rain fall maps and District maps of Sri Lanka were digitized by using a GIS application. The digitized soil map layers and crop requirement factors were analyzed by the GIS spatial analysis tool and suitability maps were created. A Web based GIS portal was developed to facilitate searching for suitable land areas and provide an online consulting service allowing searches on crop information from field to market. It is based on a client-side ActiveX control and a combination of ASP,VB, SQL,GIS,DBMS, Map Server and Web Server software on the server-side
Economic potential of site-specific management of wheat production with respect to grain quality. A. Meyer-Aurich, M. Gandorfer & P. Wagner
This paper addresses the economic potential of site-specific management of wheat production with respect to site-specific yield and protein response to nitrogen fertilizer.
In order to investigate the economic potential of site-specific fertilization with respect to grain quality we used data from field trials conducted in different locations.
We found that site-specific management for crops which are paid according to their quality can be economically very interesting. Besides site-specific fertilization quality separation during harvest can assure high economic returns. The combination of both can result in economic returns which are €40 ha above that of uniform management. / Robot system for weed detection using textural image analysis. G. Polder, F. K. van Evert, A. Lamaker, A. de Jong, G. van der Heijden, L. A.P. Lotz, T. van der Zalm & C. Kempenaar
This paper describes the building of a field robot for detection of broad-leaved weeds in grassland. The robot, comprised of cameras and a gyroscope has been successful used in detection of volunteer potato plants in cornfields and was recently extended with an additional camera and software for detection of broad-leaved weeds in grassland. When navigating a field the camera takes colour images of the ground. Image parts containing only grass were characterized by high spatial frequencies while those containing one or more weed leaves usually had lower spatial frequencies. On the basis of this observation a 2-D Fast Fourier Transform filtering method was developed. The proposed method correctly determined the absence or presence of dock plants in the field.
11.00Rural
The rural areas in the Czech Republic and broadband access to internet. J. Vaněk, J. Jarolímek, P. Šimek, M. Pokorná.The paper deals with an actual state and perspectives of further development of high-speed internet in conditions of the Czech Republic, especially regarding still insufficiently covered rural areas. The high-speed internet access (broadband) represents one of the strategic aims of an information and knowledge society construction. / ICT supporting rural sustainability
The emergence of the rural e-community. D. Heery
This paper looks at how residents are using ICT to engage with each other and the public sector in the parish of Alston Moor in the North of England. This area has been introduced to the benefits of new technology since 2001 via the Cybermoor ( and teleworking has fuelled an increase in house prices, bringing new people into the area. The Cybermoor project was originally one of the UK government’s seven pilots in their Wired-Up Communities (WuC) programme. It provided 670 of the area’s 1000 homes with a computer, with free support for 3 years and Cybermoor Ltd now sells low cost wireless broadband to 370 subscribers. Other key components of Cybermoor are the community website), the Equal Opportunities project which supports people with disabilities, and Cybermoor TV which trains people in digital video and audio production / Towards regional coherence: increasing the participatory environments in rural communities for engaging with ICTs Sarah Skerratt
There is compelling evidence that rural areas of the UK are continuing to engage with Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at rates and levels which are slower and lower than in urban areas. There is the presumption that it is only a matter of time before rural areas “catch up”. However, this supposes that: (i) there is one route for catching up, and that (ii) the delay, while rural areas catch up, is not one that should concern us, since once all areas are broadband-enabled, a “natural diffusion” will take place.
This paper provides a critical analysis of these presumptions, based on seven years of empirical analyses of various rural ICT initiatives (individual, micro-enterprise and community-based). The findings presented here are primarily from the UK; however, material and research experience from Finland and Ireland are also included later in the discussion.
11.00Business – ICT adoption - improving
The design and delivery of Decision Support Tools to maximise uptake - A. L Offer & M. M GibbonsA short study was undertaken on behalf of Defra (the UK Agriculture Ministry) to review the design and delivery mechanisms used to develop and deploy DS tools to see if the uptake and use of these tools could be improved.Surveys of user experiences and stakeholder interviews were used to gain a view of the requirements for these tools and how they should be delivered. The results of the study will be discussed and give clear guidance to developers and funders for future projects. / .
Delivering science to the horticultural industry: learning from past mistakes - R. Reader, J. Murphy, K. Phelps & R. Collier
MORPH (which stands for Methods Of Research Practice in Horticulture) is a decision support system developed specifically for the horticultural industry. Industry uptake of the system is not as great as originallyanticipated and a survey of users and potential users indicated that one reason was that MORPH was not perceived to be ‘user-friendly’. Based on our experience with MORPH, this paper sets out to identify some of the problems associated with the development of decision support software from the results of scientific research and highlights the importance of establishing user needs prior to the development of a software framework / .
User-centred Design (UCD) versus Software Process Management, the impact on usability - J. Shields
This paper compares different methods adopted to manage the GrainPlan project over a period of four years. Practical project management problems such as cost and resources often mean adopting a methodology to suit a particular phase of software projects. This paper describes the transition made from a User-centred Design (UCD) approach towards Software Process Management techniques. It will explore the reason for these changes but concentrates on the effect that the shift has on the User Community. Using the data gathered from the GrainPlan helpline database the paper highlights usability issues that users have experienced over the course of the project lifecycle. It will conclude by examining the implications for the software design process in general.
Information entropy and the uptake of DSS. N. McRoberts
11.00Education