اتوماسیون چند سطح سیستم های اطلاعات مدیریت مزرعه Multi-level automation of farm management information systems

1. Introduction The level of complexity for farming enterprises has been gradually increasing over the last decades. From simple production units, which supplied the population with affordable and sufficient food quantities, they have turned into agricultural businesses with multifunctional service sectors. In today’s competitive environment, a farm can survive financially and be sustainable only when it is well managed (Husemann and Novković, 2014). However, farm management is a challenging and time-consuming task (Doyle et al., 2000) with existing associated problems such as lack of time for in-field monitoring of tasks, and difficulty to manage finances and subsidies. Furthermore, the increase of the area per farmer during the last decades can explain the decision support that farmers need nowadays. These problems are complicated to handle due to the lack of suitable dedicated hardware and software. To be able to monitor and manage online data collection in the field, farmers require additional information and proper technologies, which recently have even entered the Big Data sector (Wolfert et al., 2017). The combination of proper time-related information with careful decisionmaking is the key factor for a successful agricultural business (Singh et al., 2008). The technological progress in computer hardware and software has enabled an effective computer-based support process, which facilitates farmer’s decision-making via the manipulation of increased quantity and quality of available information (Lewis, 1998) and, therefore, contributing to the challenge of a complex farm management. Furthermore, the increase of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools during the last decade in precision farming is noticeable (Kaivosoja et al., 2014). In order to be capable of drawing benefits from available databases, farmers have to collect, process, provide and use data in an efficient way.