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New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.sciencepub.net/newyork newyorksci@gmail.com
87
Review of Farm Management Information Systems (FMIS)
Payman Salami *1, and Hojat Ahmadi1
1. Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Biosystems Engineering, University of Tehran,
P.O. Box 4111, Karaj 31587-77871, Iran
salami@ut.ac.ir
Abstract: There have been considerable advancements in the field of MIS over the years, and it continues to grow
and develop in response to the changing needs of the business and marketing environment. Professionals and
academicians are contributing and serving the field of MIS through the dissemination of their knowledge and ideas
in professional journals. Thus, changes and trends that likely have an impact on MIS concepts, processes, and
implementation can be determined by reviewing the articles published in journals. Content of the articles published
in journals can also give us an idea about the types of research and themes that are popular during a given period. To
see the evolutionary change in the field of MIS, the present study examined the content of articles published in
business and marketing journals. [New York Science Journal 2010;3(5):87-95]. (ISSN 1554 – 0200).
Key words: Farm Management Information Systems; FMIS; GIS; IT; MIS
1. Introduction
In today’s dynamic world everything is changing
very radically; and as the 21st century dawns,
revolutionary changes are also beginning to challenge
the business and marketing world. To cope with the
increasing competition and uncertainty, companies need
to take advantage of the information technology (IT)
and information systems (IS). IS offer firms new ways
of improving efficiency. Thus, the need for management
of information is becoming the heart of marketing for
the firms in order to survive in highly competitive
markets. As the significance of management
information systems (MIS) has been increasing,
marketing and business environments have been
revolutionizing through the applications of IT. Hence,
the role of MIS in business and marketing has been also
changing continuously due to rapid advancements in
technology (Nasir, 2005).
Productivity gains in the agricultural industries
have historically been driven by the adoption of new
technical products and processes. It has been the realm
of extension to make sure that farmers hear about these
processes and technologies, and usually it has been
State governments who have funded the extension effort.
With the rapid increase in the complexity of the
technology of farming, there is now a recognized need
to improve the skills and education of our farmers - the
human capital of agriculture. The Internet is changing
the way society accesses and processes information.
Farmers now have access to a wide range of information
about many aspects of their farming systems, but it is
often thought by scientists and extension specialists that
many lack the skills necessary to use that information to
improve their farm profitability and sustainability
through technical innovation. (Bell, 2002).
We live in what is being called the "information
age", an era in which it is the knowledge and skills of
the workforce that will determine our fate in a globally
competitive marketplace. Knowledge and skills go
hand-in-hand with informed management, and it is in
better management that increased productivity will be
found.
The managerial tasks for arable farming are
currently transforming into a new paradigm, requiring
more attention on the interaction with the surroundings
(Sigrimis et al., 1999; Dalgaard et al., 2006). Among
other things, this managerial change is caused by
external entities (government, public) applying
increasing pressure on the agricultural sector to change
production from a focus on quantity to an alternate
focus on quality and sustainability (Halberg, 1999).
This change has been enforced by provisions and
restrictions in the use of production input (e.g. fertilizers,
agrochemicals, etc.) and with subsidies as an incentive
for the farmer to engage in a sustainable production. In
general, this change of conditions for the managerial
tasks on the farm has necessitated the introduction of
more advanced activities monitoring systems and
information systems to secure compliance with the
restrictions and standards in terms of specific
production guidelines, provisions for environmental
compliance, management standards as prerequisites for
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
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88
subsidies, etc. Until now, the farmers most often have
dealt with this increased managerial load by trying to
handle a bulk of information in order to make precise
decisions. The increasing use of computers and the
dramatic increase in the use of the internet have to some
degree improved and eased the task of handling and
processing of acquired external information but still, the
acquisition and analysis of available information have
proven a demanding task, since information can be
scattered over many sites and not necessarily
interrelated and collaborative. Specific attempts to
improve this situation has included the launch of
“web-based collaborative information system”
developments, combining different information
components (models, data, text, graphics) from different
but collaborating sources (Jensen et al., 2001). However,
such systems still has to be enhanced in terms of
collaboration with automated acquisition of operational
farm data and integration with the overall Farm
Management Information Systems (FMIS).
Information management plays an important role
in how well farms are able to deal with increasing
demands. In plant production tasks in the field,
agricultural machinery now plays a key role in process
acquisition and documentation of data. It is important
that field tasks are carried out according to plan, and if
sudden changes in plan are needed that these follow
standards and regulations and help to improve the
outcome (Pesonen et al., 2008).
Determination of the technological solutions for
the information management system has two
dimensions; determining user needs and determining the
technological infrastructure. Understanding of user
needs in early development state and bringing the
knowledge to designing process is important when
constructing new systems so, that they will achieve user
acceptance efficiently (Kaasinen, 2005). The needs are
taken into account when designing the new system
architecture and choosing the technology to utilize in
the system. Inventory of available technologies gives
understanding of technological resources and
possibilities that we have as building units of the new
system. As a result of the creative designing process the
specifications of the new system can be presented.
Management information systems encompass a
broad and complex topic. To make this topic more
manageable, boundaries will be defined. First, because
of the vast number of activities relating to management
information systems, a total review is not possible.
Those discussed here is only a partial sampling of
activities, reflecting the author's viewpoint of the more
common and interesting developments. Likewise where
there were multiple effects in a similar area of
development, only selected ones will be used to
illustrate concepts. This is not to imply one effort is
more important than another. Also, the main focus of
this paper will be on information systems for use at the
farm level and to some lesser extent systems used to
support researchers addressing farm level problems (e.g.,
simulation or optimization models, geographic
information systems, etc.) and those used to support
agribusiness firms that supply goods and services to
agricultural producers and the supply chain beyond the
production phase (Harsh, 2004).
The MIS manager's objective in IS development is
to identify a project's goals, environment, and alternate
development strategies, then to evaluate the alternatives
and thus select the approach that will best deliver the
system. This is a complex problem that influences the
procedures and work styles of everyone involved. Also,
various people involved have different perceptions of
needs and are naturally biased toward familiar
approaches (Berrisford et al., 1979; Brousseau, 1988;
Naumann, et al., 1982; Willis, 1988).
2. Materials and methods
There have been considerable advancements in the
field of MIS over the years, and it continues to grow
and develop in response to the changing needs of the
business and marketing environment. Professionals and
academicians are contributing and serving the field of
MIS through the dissemination of their knowledge and
ideas in professional journals. Thus, changes and trends
that likely have an impact on MIS concepts, processes,
and implementation can be determined by reviewing the
articles published in journals. Content of the articles
published in journals can also give us an idea about the
types of research and themes that are popular during a
given period. To see the evolutionary change in the field
of MIS, the present study examined the content of
articles published in business and marketing journals.
Specifically, changes and trends in the scope of research
topics over time were examined (Nasir, 2005).
A management information system includes internal
and external sources of data and allows that data to be
modified and structured in different ways as different
decisions need different sets of information (Oslon,
1986).
Management information systems (MIS) is an
integral part of the overall management system in an
Purposeful organization comprising tolls like enterprise
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.sciencepub.net/newyork newyorksci@gmail.com
89
resource planning (ERP), overall information systems
(IS), etc. ERP is an industry notion for a wide set of
management activities which support all essential
business processes within the enterprise. The
management system support management activities on
all levels as well as provide for the identification of key
performance indicators (KPI’s) (Folinas, 2007).
Typically, ERP is integrated with a database system and
will often include applications for the finance and
human resources aspects of a business.
Information systems are the software and hardware
systems that support data-intensive applications.
Especially, information systems provide the possibility
to obtain more information in “real-time” enabling a
close monitoring of the operations performance and
enhance the connection between executed operations
and the strategic targets of the enterprise (Lyons, 2005;
Folinas, 2007). However, in terms of deriving the
requirements for the information system design, often
targeted information systems lack a definitive
formulation. Different stakeholders have different
perspectives on what is and what is not the most
important to be included in the design of an information
system.
MIS differ from regular information systems
because the primary objectives of these systems are to
analyze other systems dealing with the operational
activities in the organization. In this way, MIS is a
subset of the overall planning and control activities
covering the application of humans, technologies, and
procedures of the organization. Within the field of
scientific management, MIS is most of ten tailored to
the automation or support of human decision making
(O’Brien, 1999). Figure 1 shows the conceptually
decomposing of the different management systems in an
organization (Sørensen et al., 2009).
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP):
- Enterprise-wide and cross-functional system aimed at coordinating all the resources, information,
and activities required to complete business processes
Figure 1. Concept of management information systems.
Information Systems (IS):
- The application of people, documents, technologies and procedures
- solving business processes comprising related, structured activities or tasks that
produce a specific service or product
Management Information System (MIS):
- refer to the group of information management methods tied to
the automation or support of human decision making
• Decision support system
• Expert system
• Executive decision
support
• …
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.sciencepub.net/newyork newyorksci@gmail.com
90
By following this conceptual framework and
notation, a FMIS is depicted as a planned system of the
collecting, processing, storing and disseminating of
data in the form of information needed to carry out the
operations functions of the farm.
Figure 2 shows a sample system architecture as it
should be understood by the user of the system. The
essential structure that should be understood is the
centrality of the FMIS as the system to which all other
parties are connected. The arrows, representing
communication, are purposely left vague in the sense
that they do not specify the protocol or content of the
communication. This is because the end user need not
know or even care how the communication between
the various systems is handled, only that it occurs and
that it is possible. The entire system appears to the
farmer through a browser interface or the interface
provided by the ISO-11783 TC. The TC interface is a
special case to the other available interfaces as it acts
as the gateway between the FMIS and the ISOBUS
enabled tractor-implement combination (Pesonen et al.,
007).
Figure 3 shows the technical view of the FMIS
with the connected systems grouped to four categories.
The architecture will be discussed bottom-to-top,
starting with the data storage and then moving on to
the application logic. The application logic is further
divided to class library, data transformation and
communication layers. Finally the data transfer and
formats to the different systems are considered
(Pesonen et al., 2007).
All data within the FMIS are stored to several
RDBMS (relational database management system)
using the SQL (structured query language) query
language for interaction. The three databases of figure
5.2 are:
Authentication database contains the
identification and authentication information for all
users of the system. Also contained within the
authentication database are the access permissions to
data that are used when dealing with for example
authorities and contractors. The authentication
database additionally contains the authentication
information to other services; if a mutual trust and
agreement exists between the maintainers of the FMIS
and some external service, the FMIS can
automatically authenticate users for the external
service.
Figure 2. FMIS architecture from the viewpoint of the user.
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.sciencepub.net/newyork newyorksci@gmail.com
91
General FMIS database contains the same
heterogeneous collection of information about the
farm that is stored by any commercial FMIS. One
difference is that the general FMIS database must also
contain information on farm equipment required for
precision agriculture. The schema of the general FMIS
database is complicated by the amount and diversity
of the stored information. However, this complexity
requires no novel techniques as the design and
implementation of similar databases can be considered
routine work in software development.
GIS database contains exclusively data related to
precision agriculture. The data need not be stored in a
native GIS format though several relational databases
have GIS extensions available to provide efficient
queries for the stored GIS data. The GIS database is
also the first database expected to exhibit performance
problems under an increasing load.
3. Results and discussion
In terms of information handling, the farmer
needs to manage a lot of information in order to make
economical and environmental sound decisions.
Currently, this process is very labor intensive and for
most parts, executed manually. The important
concerns and problems voiced by the farm manager
include the time consuming tasks of monitoring field
operations, manage the finances and application for
subsidies which is further complicated by the lack of
integrated soft and hardware to manage this work and
the lack of coordination when such programs do exists.
Also, the farmer voice a need for additional
information and advanced technologies to manage
monitoring and data acquisition on-line in the field.
When looking at the external concerns, it is seen that
this mostly concerns the need for sustainable
production of farm products, which is further pursued
by regulations and the possibility to receive subsidies
when more sustainable management practices are
abided by. Table 1 lists some of the voiced concerns
(Sørensen et al., 2009).
In a study of the use of Farm Management
Information Systems (FMIS), Lewis looked at the
information sources used by farm decision-makers. He
Figure 3. FMIS architecture from the viewpoint of the developer
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.americanscience.org newyorksci@gmail.com
92
found that, for the majority of farmers, the most
important source of management information was
other farmers. The most innovative group also rated
their own records highly, then came outside advice
from accountants and field days. Local and
agricultural newspapers also scored highly, well above
national newspapers, commercial newsletters or
government publications (Lewis, 1997).
Hayes et al. demonstrated a positive association
between the on-farm use of a MIS and herd
performance. Significant resources are required to
implement and use these aids, but improvements in
the overall productivity of dairy farms that calve
seasonally might be achieved if these technologies
were to be more generally adopted (Hayes et al.,
1998).
In terms of the "importance" of this information
(perhaps synonymous with trustworthiness), family
came highest except for the most innovative group,
who rated their own records just above family. Other
farmers and other professionals such as agricultural
consultants, accountants and bookkeepers came next,
although the most innovative farmers rated discussion
groups higher than these. Agricultural newspapers
were next most important, and for the most innovative
farmers, farming magazines. Universities, product
pamphlets, national newspapers, bankers, solicitors,
insurance agents, government publications and
television broadcasts were all seen as of low
importance. Agricultural and technical colleges were
seen of high importance, but only by those farmers
who had no FMIS (Bell, 2002).
Another study of a quite different group - grape
growers in the Yarra Valley (Almonte, 1998), came to
similar conclusions, despite the fact that the target
group was very different (e.g. over 70% had tertiary
qualifications). The main sources of information were
grower groups, other growers, accountants, their own
records, field days, and then family. Next came
scientific journals, something not seen in other
categories of farmers. Lowest came television, radio,
local newspapers and salespersons. There was a
significant positive correlation between age and using
information from families and negative correlations
between both level of education and size of farm and
the use of information from consultants and grower
groups respectively. It seems that the larger the
operation, the less the need for outside information.
In a study in Rafsanjan, Iran (Abdollahi
Ezzatabadi et al., 2002), the farmer participation in
establishing a simple Farm Management Information
System investigated. The results showed that the
farmers were willing enough to accept the system.
Nevertheless, having an accounting system in the first
step toward the establishment of an information
system, this is used by only 42% of the sampled
farmers. The main reason for this is the lack of
knowledge about the benefits of such systems.
When considering the Farm Management
Information System (FMIS) from the perspective of
systems usability presented here, the information
management system is more than just data storage and
functionalities supporting farm management. It has an
important active role in providing on-line support and
assistance in everyday farm activities. Thus we
suggest that the newly designed information
management system concept for automated plant
production should be named Active Farm
Management Information System, AFMIS (Pesonen et
al., 2008).
In a study on the development, change, and
transformation of Management Information Systems
(Nasir, 2005) the following results Obtained: The
results of the content analysis indicate a change in the
themes and concepts of IS over the past three decades.
Between the years 1970 and 1979, most of the articles
have concentrated on the development of IS design
and they have underlined critical factors in achieving
successful and effective IS design. In the first ten
years, IS has been used predominantly to support the
managers in their decision making. Besides, it is
evident that implementation of IS into sales
management has been popular and widespread in this
era. However, IS implementations in the sales
management have been limited to make forecasting
about the sales and to take feedback from the sales
persons. However, in the second ten years, IS
implementations have disseminated into different
domains of business such as maritime industry,
industrial markets, motor carrier markets, banking
sector, etc.. The roles and responsibilities of the
managers in the MIS began to change, and the
significance of user involvement (such as involvement
of executive managers, managers, and line managers)
in the management processes of IS has increased
during 1980s. As the need of interaction among
executives, users, and IS managers has increased for
the success of MIS operations, the decentralization of
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
http://www.americanscience.org newyorksci@gmail.com
93
IS departments has become a dominant issue during
the period of 1980–1989. Similarly, the significance of
collaboration and interaction among the high-level
executives, users, and information system managers
has also continued to be mentioned during the period
1990–2002. However, in contrast to the period of
1980–1989, in the period of 1990–2002 the changing
role of chief information officers (CIO) has been
discussed. Practitioners of the period 1990–2002 have
discussed whether CIO is adding value or not. As the
firms began to outsource their IS, a discussion of
whether to outsource IS or use in-house IS also started
at that time.
Naranjo-Gil in a study showed that TMT
diversity is an important variable influencing the
relationship between MIS sophistication and strategic
performance. The issues of management
organizational performance are critical problems
confronting top managers in public organizations. The
findings of this paper provide a fruitful avenue for
improving our understanding of strategic performance
in hospitals and other organizations (Naranjo-Gil,
2009). Governmental authorities have to design the
MIS to provide a broad range of information to health
care managers. Thus, top management teams can face
the challenge of balances and coordinates patients,
financial, organizational and community needs
(Fuller-Love & Cooper, 1996; Brittain & Macdougall,
1995; Shortell et al., 1996). A FMIS is depicted as a
planned system of the collecting, processing, storing
and disseminating of data in the form of information
needed to carry out the operations functions of the
farm.
4. Conclusions
MIS differ from regular information systems
because the primary objectives of these systems are to
analyze other systems dealing with the operational
activities in the organization. In this way, MIS is a
subset of the overall planning and control activities
covering the application of humans, technologies, and
procedures of the organization. Within the field of
scientific management, MIS is most of ten tailored to
the automation or support of human decision making.
General FMIS database contains the same
heterogeneous collection of information about the
farm that is stored by any commercial FMIS. One
difference is that the general FMIS database must also
contain information on farm equipment required for
precision agriculture.
Correspondence to:
Payman Salami
Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering,
Faculty of Biosystems Engineering, University of
Tehran, P.O. Box 4111, Karaj 31587-77871, Iran
Fax: +98-21-665-93099
Cell phone: +98-918-373-4751
Emails: payman.salami@gmail.com; salami@ut.ac.ir
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11/9/2009
Payman Salami was born in 1979 in Kurdistan/Iran, received his B.Sc. degree in
Agricultural Machinery Engineering from the Bu-Ali Sina University, Iran, in 2003. He is
now M.Sc. student in Agricultural Mechanization Engineering in the University of Tehran
under supervision of Dr Hojat Ahmadi. His research fields include Analytics of input
output and waste energies in agriculture production, Information Systems, Application of
GIS and RS systems in agriculture, Condition Monitoring, and Mechanization Indices.
New York Science Journal, 2010;3(5): Salami et al., Review of FMIS
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95
Hojat Ahmadi was born in Shiraz/Iran in 1969, received B.Sc. degree in Agricultural
Machinery Engineering from the University of Shiraz, Iran, in 1992, M.Sc. and Ph.D.
degrees in Mechanical Engineering of Agricultural Machinery from the University of
Tehran, Iran, in 1996 and 2001, respectively. He is currently assistant professor in
Department of Mechanical Engineering of Agricultural Machinery at University of
Tehran. His current research interests are Machinery Fault Detection, Vibration & Oil
Monitoring, Signal Processing, Precision Agriculture and System Maintenance.