1. Project Background and Justification
As the internet technologies develops quickly in Zhejiang province, most of the counties or some of townships within the provinces now equip with basic computer and dial-up connection with local county and district government. It is estimated there have been more than 40 of agriculture-oriented web sites was established and functioned with users on agriculture production and marketing information in Zhejiang province of China. However, few web sites can provide crop management in detail and dynamic ways for decision support to farmers considering their situation on land, labours and N inputs etc. Farmers are familiar with 110 hotline which is a agriculture technology information providers on line in Zhejiang. Generally, this 110 agricultural service module and function are emerged from administrative decree that was issued from the Zhejiang Provincial Government, called "e-agriculture" and "e-agricultural technologies" projects. Minority of them are privately owned or run by joint-stock companies. Information is a few and lack of dynamic and function technologies support on special crop management and marketing especially for farmers and small farming cooperation agency. The present web service and situation can’t meet the requirement from the small farmers and farm holder for agriculture production. There is urgent need from these small cooperation group to use internet to look for the chance to increase the product technologies and meanwhile to reduce the external input or to optimise input considering economic, environment issue with effective technologies extension and support.
Because most of the counties, townships or villages are almost agricultural and rural enterprises dominated in Zhejiang province, a few application of Internet either for local governmental and political administration, or for economic and social development was established or applied. Although the so-called "e-government" project was launched in 1998, most counties or township government agencies face the problems: how to provide, maintain and guide information on marketing mechanism and agricultural production and rural areas at the county or township level?
Now this project tries to give the answers that aims to provide the dynamic and functional web based crop and vegetable system support for farmers and small cooperation agency to provide information and simulation service for their making decision on the agriculture production, we called it a “e -farm” project. We will take Fuyang, Anji County as a prototype of county with ICT serving for agriculture and rural development. In Anji and Fuyang, a county complex in northern of Zhejiang and suburban of Hangzhou city area of Zhejiang Province, China, there already have been several web sites for providing agriculture information. We will integrate our web-based tools into their websites and provide value-added use and more profitable with other ICT tools and methodologies, to produce dynamic, useful and practical solutions for the above problems.
2. Project Objectives
2.1. General Objective
To create a Web based e-farm site to promote dynamic and functional simulation tools as a useful, friendly and economic technical way for farmers on internet, improving small farm production and providing agriculture decision maker with efficient and economic online services.
2.2. Specific Objectives
- To give a functional demonstration web sites and web tool using simulation at county level for agriculture and rural development with visible advancement by internet. Establishing a pilot web based simulator for agriculture production technologies extension.
- To Establish a internet based computer program for uploading and downloading the data and information while using the simulation and modeling tools.
- To establish an internet/intranet platform to help township and county government staff and technicians to transfer the technologies and tools for widely and useful adoption and extension with transparent formulation of agricultural economic policy, marketing information, public assessment of rural development plan, and other activities related to regulation of agro-economic composition, marketing of goods and services in rural areas and poverty alleviation(original).
- To establish the pilot network of web-based crop management within two areas in Zhejian g for farmers and small farm holders.
3. Project Beneficiaries
Project beneficiaries: state clearly which segments of the population will benefit from the research.
- the e-farm web based application tools developed in this project will become a key component of county e-government facility and platform.
- Farmers: the simulation model on crop and vegetable considering fertilizer, weather and soil situation will advise them to make right decisions on crop planting, growing harvesting and business strategies; the N Module on web resulted from this project will help them to optimize their N input and make money greatly.
- Small Farm or Companies holder: The ”e-farm“ system toolkit that will be developed in this project will provide them the functional balance in their farm input and output activities and improve their benefits with modern management ideology and methodology.
- Marketers: provide a platform for farmers and buyers to establish relationship on products. the project will assist them in finding more opportunities to sell their goods and services.
4. Project Sustainability
Most of the counties and districts in Zhejiang Province have formulated in 2000-2001 a five or even ten years plan to develop Communication Technologies or ICTs to promote the local economy development. There are some program and projects have been conducted in county level to build infrastructure and information service system to meet the economic and social development needs, to provide technologies and information for farmers, farm or company holders for their production. There are also some web sites in each big districts/counties which are called 110 service hotline on agricultural technologies and e-experts on line service to provide technologies instruction and training. But it is textual service and lack of the digital and mutual dynamic service on crop and vegetables growth and regulation with external inputs. According to the ICT development planning in Zhejiang Province, each county will established three web services system for local farmer and farm enterprises, which include the 110 agro-technologies hotline and web service, marketing information and web technologies training and dynamic decision-support system. The advanced networking applications, based on technologies in communication, will be established for agricultural technologies and extension at county or township level . So we believe that the web based crop and vegetables growth simulator and decision support system toolkits will be linked with other web sites or incorporated into web site to cover rural districts and towns, and be accessible to numerous Internet applications in Zhejiang by ISDN and satellite technology, as well as using firewall technology for security.
Key farmers and rural farming enterprises will be the main users on this function and will access to this site by ADSL or dial up for getting information on their situation production planning and input suggestion, nutrient balance and pest control manners even on economic and marketing information. It will be sustained by local county government support on agriculture and user’s support on detail information paying services when it is actual useful and profitable for producers.
5. Project Methodology
Project methodology: state clearly, in the methodology how the general and specific project objectives will be achieved.
Review the existing web site and services for the further improvements and farmer’s requirement on internet service with low price and easy going ways. Reviewing the existing methods which is adopted to develop the similar content within Zhejiang province and China or outside China.
Contact with some experienced experts and works conducted in Zhejiang and other provinces and compare the different experiences which the problems they encountered in the activities.
Using the software for the sketch of the whole web and branch of the e-farm structure. Design and develop the software packages for crop production, N module and economic decision making manners.
Software and sub-module will be developed for online consultation through web modeling. The data, questions and decision will be given on line service for different situations. The email message will be used automatically uploaded information and description on farmer’s production.
Design and develop training module for users on first hand and given tutorial on the web modeling, decision and environmental advise on crop and vegetables production. 110 hotline and proposed telecommunication systems will be adopted effectively using the existing infrastructure for short message service and information access.
This project will be conducted as a participatory module to the development strategy of information service. Experts, technicians and all stakeholders will be mobilized to contribute their efforts or knowledge into the web construction. diverse methods such as 110 agro-technologies in the county's calling center, village's broadcasting and blackboard, field training courses, and distance learning will be incorporated into the project functions for database construction and modeling instruction.
5.1 Web based simulator and Model construction
The crop growth simulator and vegetables model will be incorporated into the web site being adapted into the real situation with modification on the different function modules inside. All these modules will include the crop development stages, photosynthesis, respiration and leaf area expansion, nitrogen modeling and water simulation model, economic and yield assessment modules etc. The original models was written in VB and it will converted into VB script (ASP developed language) and other computer languages. The original model was developed and tested for more than 8 years in our research and demonstration trial within Zhejiang province. We had developed the crop(rice, corn and wheat) model, N-Module and water balance module in paddy field and well drainage soil conditions.
5.2 The Web based crop simulation and decision support on Internet: E-Crop management SimuSystem
The core technology to aid the performance of the web based model is the Internet SimuSystem. Agro-ecology Institute of Zhejiang University will use the methods with which we are familiar from our research experiences on modeling project started from 1992 up to now. We will use the research results that was awarded by Zhejiang Provincial Government in 1999. Furthermore, the ASP and ODBC, Microsoft NT SQL will be used and completed the construction of Web based E-crop management SimuSystem, an integrated database system containing dynamic simulation, process analysis, soil and weather date and decision making knowledge. The structure of the E-crop SimuSystem is designed as Figure 1.
Figure 1: E-crop management SimuSystem structure on the Web
6. Project Timeline
- Project time-line: include a time-table/schedule of key activities
- The suggested E-crop management SimuSystem project will be conducted for one year with the following timetable on a month-base and with the corresponding major tasks in charge of the team members.
January
- Draft an operational plan of the project together with the copartners and local township government agencies (Yang, Chen and Shen, Xu, Sun), and
- Make a decision on key farmer, demonstration village and township selection and model and section selection for this web model (Yang and local project leaders).
February
- Design, rewrite and organize the hierarchical structure of crop simulation model, including thoughtful discussions with the farmer requirement on it and improvement on organization of project management(Yang and local project leaders);
- Design a framework of the E-crop SimuSystem. Take a field survey of rural communities and farmers' demand for the all around information on crop and vegetable production related to industrial, livelihood, aging, gender, cultural, and geographic bases (Agro-ecology Institute(AEI)staff and local staff).
March
- Take technological design of the E-crop management SimuSystem, including web-database over MS Windows NT (Wang, Chen and Wu);
- Data selection and review and put into computer server. all-round information service in villages, towhships and markets selected, through the hierarchical model at field levels (agro-ecology staff and local technicians); and Write the first quarter report of the project in Chinese and English (Yang).
April
- Start programming of the E-crop management SimuSystem (AEI experts Feng, Chen, Gao and Zhang);
- The discussion on 110 agro-technologies service hotline cooperated into the module. Spring action of the all-round information service in villages,townships and markets selected (Zhang, Wu and some students).
May
- Programming of the E-crop Management SimuSystem(Wang, Zhang and Feng).
- Continue to build web based programming and establish cooperation with 110 hotline services Data collection, continues the inputting into computer. all-round information service in township/villages and markets will be selected through the hierarchical model at field levels (local copartners ).
June
- Complete the E-crop management SimuSystem (Wang, Zhang, Wu and Feng) and start to develop the SQL and KB database (Wang, Chen and Gao),
- Data check in the reviewing for the progress. Write the first semester (second quarter) report of the project in Chinese and English (Yang).
July
- Continue to develop the E-crop management SimuSystem database (Wang, Chen and Gao), Model rewriting finished and completed in time.
- Complete construction of the linkage with calling center.
August
- Complete the primary development of the E-crop management database (Wu, Gao and Zhang),
- Test the web calling center to serve for farmers and rural people (Wang and Zhang), and
- Connection with database and web simulator for actual running and results assessment. Summer action of the all-round information service in villages and markets selected through statistics bureau(AEI and local staff).
September
- Primary web site and function module running and Open the calling center service for farmers and Rural people (Wang and Yang),
- Write the third quarter report of the project in Chinese and English (Yang).
October
- Autumn action of the all-round information service in villages and markets at large through the hierarchical model of four levels (Wang and Zhang), and
- Maintain and modify the E-crop management SimuSystem and the database (Wang, Chen and Gao).
November
- Autumn action of the all-round information service in villages and markets at large through the township levels (Wang and local copartner staff), and Training courses opened for delegates from other places for the web based crop management and system analysis using E-crop management SimuSystem with the datasets (Yang and Gao).
December
- Formal launching the web simulator and decision support on line and hotline with 110 service.
- Write the final report of the project (Yang).
7. Project Outputs
- Project outputs: state what the project will produce and in what form it will be delivered and disseminated
- The E-crop Management SimuSystem will become a key component of the crop management at field level and also partially function as e-extension of agricultural science and technologies in county.
- An e-simulator for vegetable production system
- Preliminary performance of the E-crop management SimuSystem model.
- Project report on E-farm and toolkits and its application
- Skill development and experiences on web-based simulator and data transferring.
8. Project Monitoring
Project monitoring: state what monitoring and/or evaluation processes are being proposed. For doing better in future conduction of the proposed project, it is necessary to give a self-critical comment on project monitoring and evaluation processes.
This project will be reviewed by local county and township government, farmers to determine its usefulness and effectiveness in their production and information support and services. It is also can be monitored based on the final output and target specified in the time line and activities report of our project progress timely on a semiannual basis and keep in touch with PanAsia web-sites and e-mails. Final evaluation will be conducted throughout the project questionnaire as a report submitted to the Donor.
