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 optimizing
farming management and it requires records of agricultural
work. Farmers conventionally write records on paper but
it is difcult and tedious to check past agricultural-work
data and control the cost of agricultural products. A system
of cultivation management, iFarm, is proposed, which was
developed to support efcient farming management. The
system consists of smartphone applications, Web browsers
and a cloud server. Farmers on farmland can easily refer to
work plans, enter eld data into the cloud system, and share
them with head ofce in real time by using smartphones.
Farmers at head ofce can analyze data in the cloud system
with a Web browser and estimate farming costs and form
work 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 systematically
optimizing 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
difcult to analyze much of this data.
Communication is important in the eld 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 eld 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 ofces
share their plans and data, and analyze the collected data
to make agriculture more efcient.
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
ofce 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
elds. 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 the
eld can check information on work plans and send eld
reports to the ofce using a smartphone application. All
data are stored on the cloud server and can be accessed
everywhere from farms and ofces. A Web browser is
used to manage eld 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 a
software as a service (SaaS) basis. Farmers are able to
manage the database [1] directly from their Web browsers.
2013 IEEE 2nd Global Conference on Consumer Electronics (GCCE)
978-1-4799-0892-9/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE 233
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 specic
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 specic time tasks is provided.
5) Cost Manager: Gasoline costs and vinyl costs can
be 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 elds, 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 elds 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 specic days and times can be
displayed. Task lists can also be displayed for a specic
eld 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 ofine 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 specic dates from the cloud server and they
can also send work information to the cloud server and
delete unnecessary data.
Figure 3. Screenshot of smartphone applications (task listing and
synchronization)
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
briey 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.
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