Anthea van der Hoogen, Andre P. Calitz, Margaret Cullen, Justin Cork
Abstract
The ever-growing global population places great demands on the sustained production capacity of agricultural organisations to meet the desperate need for nutrition. Production methods need to evolve to improve production and quality and thus, address this problem. Hydroponics, a highly refined method of agricultural production and Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) are well-established globally, with thousands of hectares under propagation. Hydroponics is an evolution that has the capacity to meet the needs of a growing global population and its nutritional needs, but scientific understanding and application of knowledge in growing and managing a hydroponics farm are still needed. This paper outlines a Farm Management Information System (FMIS) model that can be used by farmers in the hydroponics industry for decision-making, report generation and documentation by leaning toward the use of hydroponics as a sustainable way of farming.
The FMIS model was developed from the results of a study conducted using structured interviews with 30 South African hydroponic farm managers, to determine the internal data and external information needs of farmers, as well as from data points relating to four functional components discussed in the paper. This study’s results showed a need for a FMIS for the hydroponic industry in South Africa. The results also indicated that managers were not fully satisfied with their current information system’s (CIS) performance and would be interested in considering alternative information systems. The contribution of this paper is the empirical FMIS model for the South African hydroponic industry, which can be used to support the requirements for transforming CIS into useful FMIS.