PRECISION FARMING
http://www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi11/papers/pdf/225.pdf
Abstract
A national centre for geospatial data has been established in Malaysia under the
custodianship of the Malaysian Centre for GeoSpatial Data Infrastructure (MaCGDI).
Within this backbone of national infrastructure, several secondary infrastructures are
being planned to serve a multitude of users. This paper addresses one such application
which is targeted at the farming community. Although web based technology has
revolutionized the way information is traded or shared across the internet while e-commerce
and information dissemination activities have brought great benefits, there
are communities that have been left out due to their inability to purchase commercial
web mapping software. One such community involves the semi-literate farmers in
Malaysia. Thus, there is a need to provide and affordable solution while narrowing the
knowledge gap between developers and users. A potential solution is through the use of
open source technology which is generally accessible to all people in the world, anytime,
anywhere without the need to purchase and install additional software. This study
explores the use of open source software, Map Guide Open Source, PHP, Apache Web
server and MySQL database. The study area selected was in the state of Selangor in
Malaysia. The web-based system developed in this research allows the farmers to
access the information about rice cultivation in their area. The system allows variable
rate fertilizer application maps to be printed for the farmers. Farmers are aided by the
historical data about yield per paddy lot and fertilizer application in the previous planting
seasons. This information helps farmers to analyze and reflect on the best strategy for
the coming growing season. The benefits of this work is that it allows information sharing
among farmers especially on rice production, such as recommendations of fertilizer, and
to provide equal access to web-based information from end-users to policy makers for
improving the productivity and efficiency of rice production through precision farming.
(Keywords: Web-based GIS, precision farming, open source)
