Information technology-based farm management system for enhancing farmers’ income

As population increases, land becomes an increasingly scarce resource, calling for immediate attention for sustainable land-use planning. The present study was carried out to develop decision support systems to explore the potential crop management options and associated environmental impacts by integrating the conventional and information and communication technology (ICT)-based extension technologies for dissemination of the agro-advisory to the farmers for sustained productivity. The model, named Info FMS (Information on Farm Management System) was designed by connecting an excel-based model with web-server through hyper text markup language (HTML) pages and scripting language. The model integrates bio-physical, agronomic and socio-economic data to establish input-output relationships related to water, fertilizer, labour and biocide uses, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biocide residue in soil and N fluxes in rice-wheat system. The web pages of the model provide the information of input and output parameters in different sections and guide the user to operate the system through the command buttons. Sensitivity tests were conducted to demonstrate how the model predicted income, global warming potential and N loss respond to variations in input parameters related to soil and climate.