FINFO - A FIELD AND FARM TECHNICAL-INFORMATION MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

Site-specific information about farm management activities may become increasingly significant to farmers who are concerned about efficient resource use and environmental protection. Recordkeeping, however, has not been widely recognized among many farm managers as an important activity. The resulting lack of acceptance of recordkeeping may be linked to shortcomings in both the collection and the subsequent use of the information. An information management program was developed for use at the individual farm level to collect and process data, and to report and summarize technical information about fields and the whole farm. It was developed and tested on actual farm nutrient management activity data. The program is sufficiently flexible to handle a wide variety of transaction data for field activities and descriptions. Data records for farm activities are created from natural language notes using unique descriptors for each farm. Data are entered with microcomputers and processed using mainframe computer hardware and software. Information reports of activities can be generated from a variety of standard formats. Maps, timelines, and statistical summaries can be generated. This transaction processing system has the potential to become part of a more comprehensive management information or decision support system.