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iFarm: Development of Cloud-based System of Cultivation Management for

Precision Agriculture

Yukikazu Murakami

, Slamet Kristanto Tirto Utomo

, Keita Hosono

,Takeshi Umezawa

,Noritaka Osawa

Kagawa National College of Technology, Japan, Chiba University, Japan, Okayama University, Japan

murakami@t.kagawa-nct.ac.jp, acta0285@chiba-u.jp

AbstractPrecision agriculture is aimed at optimizingfarming management and it requires records of agriculturalwork. Farmers conventionally write records on paper butit is difficult and tedious to check past agricultural-workdata and control the cost of agricultural products. A systemof cultivation management, iFarm, is proposed, which wasdeveloped to support efficient farming management. Thesystem consists of smartphone applications, Web browsersand a cloud server. Farmers on farmland can easily refer to

work plans, enter field data into the cloud system, and sharethem with head office in real time by using smartphones.Farmers at head office can analyze data in the cloud systemwith a Web browser and estimate farming costs and formwork plans based on their analyses.

Keywords-Precision agriculture, Cultivation management,Smartphone, Web database

I. INTRODUCTION

It is important to optimize cultivation management to

improve agriculture. Agricultural work has been primarily

managed based on the intuition and experience of skilled

farmers.

Precision agriculture [4] is aimed at systematicallyoptimizing farming management. Cultivation management

requires records of agricultural work and analyses based

on the records to manage agricultural work, e.g., to know

exactly how much fertilizer and pesticide is used and

control production costs. Although records written on

paper have been used for cultivation management, it is

difficult to analyze much of this data.

Communication is important in the field because work-

places for farmers in agricultural corporations are often

separated by distance [5]. A system of cultivation man-

agement should help farmers refer to their work plans and

enter field data in real-time. It is also important for the

system to be accessed from anywhere.

The system should also help farmers at farms and offices

share their plans and data, and analyze the collected data

to make agriculture more efficient.

Moreover, it is also important for the system to be

less expensive and affordable to enable cost-effective

agriculture.

Recently, many studies have discussed advantages of

bringing cloud computing technology into agriculture

sector[3][6]. Farmers need neither to know the technical

details about the system nor to care about maintenance

with cloud computing. The cost of cloud computing in-

frastructure is lower than the conventional ones.A cloud-based system with smartphone applications and

Web browsers is considered to be one of the best models

to satisfy the above-mentioned requirements. Smartphone

applications can help information to be collected from

farms. A cloud system would help farmers share collected

data and access them from anywhere. Farmers at the

office could use this information to do some useful things

to increase productivity. For example, they could use

the information to estimate production costs or do some

management work such as planning work or managing

fields. The system does not require any specialized hard-ware. Field information can be collected with smartphones

because of their mobility and ease of use. This system is

expected to cost less than existing systems (e.g., geoMa-

tion Farm and NEC M2M Solution CONNEXIVE) and

be more usable because it uses inexpensive commodity

hardware such as smartphones and many people have

learned how to use them.

II. OUTLINE OF DEVELOPED SYSTEM

The system consists of three sub-systems: a smartphone

application, a cloud server, and a Web browser. Figure

1 has a schematic of the entire system. Farmers in thefield can check information on work plans and send field

reports to the office using a smartphone application. All

data are stored on the cloud server and can be accessed

everywhere from farms and offices. A Web browser is

used to manage field and work schedules and control

costs. The browser can be used on a smartphone, a tablet,

or a personal computer depending on the situations and

usability requirements.

Figure 1. Outline of proposed system

A. Web browser

Figure 2 is a screenshot of the Web browser interface

The system is provided as a cloud application on asoftware as a service (SaaS) basis. Farmers are able to

manage the database [1] directly from their Web browsers.

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The Web browser system provides them with six major

functions. Each function is described in the following.

Figure 2. Screenshot of Web browser

1) Field Manager: This function provides ways for

farmers to check work histories and register new work

plans from each plot of farmland. Farmers can also ana-

lyze costs by checking the work hours spent on specific

farmland from work histories.

2) Out-Field Manager: This function provides a way

of recording all work histories from outside farmland.

3) Seedling Manager: Farmer can record seedlings,

which are important to control costs, and their cost with

this function.

4) Task Manager: All the tasks can be displayed here

and a search function for specific time tasks is provided.

5) Cost Manager: Gasoline costs and vinyl costs canbe recorded for each area with this function. All these

costs are calculated and displayed on a table.

6) Ledger Manager: Entering and managing infor-

mation items such as fields, workers, and crop names

(varieties) can be carried out with this function.

B. Smartphone applications

Figure 3 has a screenshot of smartphone applications.

Smartphone applications [2] allow workers to input their

work histories and report them. Workers at agricultural

corporations usually work in groups. The group leader can

report the work histories of his/her group from fields with

a smartphone. The smartphone system has three functions:

task lists, location-based task lists, and synchronization.

The functions are described in the following.

1) Task lists: Tasks on specific days and times can be

displayed. Task lists can also be displayed for a specific

field or location. Task content can also be changed or new

tasks can be added.

2) Synchronization: Network connections may not

available in some areas. The system has been designed to

work offline as well as online to increase its availability. It

is possible to synchronize data between smartphones and

the cloud server. Smartphones can obtain master data or

task lists on specific dates from the cloud server and theycan also send work information to the cloud server and

delete unnecessary data.

Figure 3. Screenshot of smartphone applications (task listing andsynchronization)

The communication charges for wireless mobile net-

works (3G/4G/LTE) are presently very expensive. The sys-

tem therefore allows smartphones to use WiFi connections

to communicate with the cloud server to reduce running

costs.

III. CONCLUSION

We proposed and developed a cloud-based system to

manage cultivation. The functions of the system were

briefly described. The system helps many farmhouses

to manage agricultural work to accomplish cost-effective

precision agriculture. We plan to conduct experiments

to evaluate how usable the system is and how well it

performs. Moreover, it is expected that data collected with

the system will comprise big data for precision agriculture.Analysis of big data will lead to improved precision

agriculture and cultivation management in the future.

REFERENCES

[1] K. Hosono and Y. Murakami, Development of the Webdatabase system for agricultural-work information control,IEICE LOIS 2011-73, pp. 16, March 2012 (in Japanese).

[2] K. T. U. Slamet, Y. Murakami, and K. Shigeta, Devel-opment of farming journal-making support system withinformatics and communication technology, IEICE LOIS2011-74, pp. 712, March 2012 (in Japanese).

[3] M. Tian, Q. Xia, and H. Yuan, Discussion on the Ap-plication of Cloud Computing in Agricultural InformationManagement, Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engi-neering and Technology 5(8): pp. 25382544, 2013

[4] S. Shibusawa, Precision farming approaches to small-farmagriculture, Technical Bulletin, Food and Fertilizer Tech-nology Center, Vol. 160, pp. 110, 2002.

[5] Y. Murakami, K. T. U. Slamet, K. Hosono, and K. Shigeta,Proposed of cultivation management system with informat-ics and communication technology, IEEE GCCE 2012, pp.175176, October 2012.

[6] Y. Zhu, D. Wu, S. Li, Cloud Computing and Agricultural

Development of China: Theory and Practice, IJCSI Inter-national Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 10, Issue1, No.1, pp. 712, January 2013

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