volume of software, services and other relevant material and to the general success and appeal of electronic networks, the potential for expanding the vocational uptake of the Internet is considerable.
Currently 20% of Finnish farmers have personal experience of use of the Internet, yet only 10 % have tried using it for business related purposes, and less than 4% use it regularly in their practical work. The occupational use of the Internet is small compared with the expectations and perceived potential of the technology. We discuss the uptake of the Internet and some factors affecting its use.
Contents
1. PCs at farm level
2. The primary use of PCs at farm level
3. Use of the Internet at farm level
4. Internet use by skilled agricultural professionals
5. Agricultural Internet sites and services in Finland
6. Factors affecting Internet uptake
7. Agronet - forerunner in promotion of Internet technology
8. Future perspectives
9. Conclusion
1. PCs at farm level
There are some 84 000 Finnish farms with more than 5 ha of arable crop land. According to a recent survey (Food and Farm Facts Ltd, June, 1998), 48% of such farms are equipped with a PC. Just over one year earlier, 39% and just over two years earlier, 31% of them were equipped with a PC. More precisely, the number of PCs at farm level has increased as follows:
PC fittings at farm level
| Time |
Number of farms with a PC |
% of farms |
| April 1992 |
11 000 |
11 |
| September 1994 |
17 500 |
19 |
| December 1995 |
30 000 |
31 |
| February 1997 |
33 000 |
39 |
| February 1998 |
37 000 |
44 |
| June 1998 |
43 300 |
48 |
PC fittings at farm level vary greatly, depending on the type of farm or farmer. Larger farms with more than 30 ha of arable crop land, or farmers under 40 years of age and specialised in pig husbandry are the most likely to have a PC, some 67 % of such farms or farmers being fitted up with a PC. In contrast, only 29% of farms with less than 15 ha of arable crop land, and only 18% of farmers over 55 years of age have a PC. Considering the future plans of farmers, 55% of those who have decided to continue farming, but only 23% of those who have decided to give up farming, have a PC.
2. The primary use of PCs at farm level
The report of Viitaniemi (October, 1997) on the use of standalone micro programs in practical agribusiness found that 20 commercial standalone programs were available for bookkeeping, six for payrolls, invoicing and maintenance of registers, and another six for other aspects of farm economics. Furthermore, a total of 24 standalone programs were found to cover various aspects of production. Over 5000 copies of the most widely used individual standalone program had been sold. Considering all the programs, the median number of copies sold was below 1000. Most of the farmers with a PC for agribusiness used it for bookkeeping. The number of all practicable bookkeeping licences sold was somewhere close to 18 000. From this we can deduce that the extent of the occupational agricultural use of standalone PC programs at farm level is limited to some 20% of farms.
Another widely used application of PCs on farms is to connect the PC via a telephone link to the mainframe legacy services provided by the
Agricultural Data Processing Centre owned by the
Finnish Association of Rural Advisory Centres. Their services typically cover the various aspects of production planning, performance recording and the economics of dairy production. All the Nordic countries, Finland included, have a long history of genetic evaluation and it is important that they should all use the same standards in recording performance traits. Thus, even though the current mainframe services may be based on outdated technology, they are still compatible with services elsewhere in the world and therefore are not likely to be replaced soon. These services are typically used by extension officers but modem-based link programs have also been sold to some 2250 farmers and 600 agricultural schools. The
Agricultural Data Processing Centre also offers some database and electronic network services, e.g., for marketing agricultural products and for managing animal identification numbers. The use of these services, too, is based on direct modem links and a free connect program that contains templates for data entry and some data processing. Some 6000 copies of this program have been supplied. The most frequently used service handles management of the Finnish cattle register, which can also be conducted via the Internet.
3. Use of the Internet at farm level
In recent years there has been a tremendous wave of projects promoting the use of Internet technology in Finnish agriculture. This has resulted in a rapidly increasing volume of relevant information and material providing many possibilities for their potential users. Information is sparse on use of the Internet at farm level and, in particular, on occupational use. Referring to a market survey conducted by a national banking group, Ramstadius (April, 1998) reports that, in spring 1997, the overall use of the Internet on farms was limited to 12% of farmers. Another study carried out by the dairy co-operative Tuottajain Maito (May, 1998) reports that 22% of dairy farms are equipped with the Internet. The survey by Food and Farm Facts Ltd (April, 1998) reports that 15 000 of Finnish farms, i.e., some 18%, are equipped with the Internet and 6000 plan to acquire the appropriate fittings by the first quarter of 1999. Furthermore, their latest survey (June, 1998) reports that 16 500 farms, i.e., 20%, have access to the Internet. For comparison, Taloustutkimus (April, 1998) reports that use of the Internet among all Finns was 25%, i.e., somewhat more than that among farmers. By the above mentioned survey by Food and Farm Facts Ltd, the application areas of the Internet on farms are as follows:
Use of the Internet among those with appropriate Internet fittings
|
Regular use (%) |
Occasional use (%) |
Total use (%) |
| Online banking |
33 |
5 |
38 |
| E-mail |
22 |
18 |
40 |
| Managing the cattle register |
18 |
20 |
38 |
| Search for general information |
15 |
29 |
44 |
| Search for agricultural information |
10 |
44 |
54 |
| Agronet |
10 |
29 |
39 |
| Surfing |
7 |
50 |
57 |
| Games and entertainment |
6 |
29 |
35 |
| Services of the Ministry of Agriculture |
5 |
17 |
22 |
| Weather services |
4 |
41 |
45 |
| Services of agricultural enterprises |
4 |
22 |
26 |
| Advisory services |
3 |
21 |
24 |
| Forestry information |
1 |
30 |
31 |
| News groups |
1 |
23 |
24 |
| Market services |
1 |
14 |
15 |
From the above list we can estimate that, excluding online banking, the number of farmers using the Internet regularly for practical agribusiness must be close to 20% of those who have access to the Internet, i.e., some 3000 farmers. Thus, despite the development of many services and other relevant material, the current occupational use of the Internet is limited to between 3% and 4% of farmers, which is not much compared with the perceived potential of the technology and the many projects promoting its use.
4. Internet use by skilled agricultural professionals
The above list of purposes for which practising farmers use the Internet indicated that online banking, e-mail, cattle register management, general information search, and the search for vocational agricultural information are the most common Internet application areas. Presumably more advanced Internet users would make different use of the Internet services available. To find out how skilled Internet users employ the Internet, Ramstadius (1998) interviewed experienced representatives from several interest groups of the Finnish agro-industry. The interviewees were all known to use Internet services in their daily work. Ranking the Internet services accessed by the number of their users gave the following list:
- E-mail (foreign connections, attach files between organisations, mailing lists)
- FTP services (data from EU sources, automatic data transfer between organisations)
- Agronet (providing and/or searching for information, topical issues, research information, events)
- EU web sites (current EU information, EU projects, official statistics)
- Web file servers (PC program updating, program information)
- Search engines (information search)
- Tucows library (downloading shareware programs, search for new programs)
- Finnish official web sites (search for regulations, opportunities, blanks)
- Online banking services (paying bills in the office or at home)
- Timetables (public transport, travelling, openings)
- News services (current news, weather services, text TV)
Comparing this list with that in the previous section, we find that, among the more skilled users, file and data services now play a more prominent role. In both lists, the Agronet constitutes the main source of vocational agricultural services.
5. Agricultural Internet sites and services in Finland
In Finland, there are several sites providing agricultural services on the Internet, for example, the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the
Finnish Association of Rural Advisory Centres, all Regional Advisory Centres, all major agriculture-oriented universities and research institutes, the Finnish Farmers' Union, all major wholesale companies, governmentally supported rural training institutes, and many individual farms.
The main Internet list of Internet services (in Finnish) is provided by the Agronet project, which is a joint effort of several agriculture-related organisations, i.e., the
Agricultural Research Centre of Finland,
Agropolis Ltd, the
Association of Rural Advisory Centres,
Helsinki University Agricultural Library, the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and the
National Food Expertise Centre, see
http://www.agronet.fi. Some ten regional organisations and companies (East Bothnia region) have started a joint Agrolink project to produce an Internet list for the Swedish-speaking minority, see
http://www.agrolink.fi. These directories provide access to the following services:
a) market information: electronic market places and product presentations are provided by several organisations;
b) weather information and forecasts: an agricultural weather service including forecasts and recommendations for necessary measures has been available for several years, see the weather service link list at
http://www.agronet.fi;
c) news: news information is given by some 10 providers;
d) employment: farmers have established a joint venture to supply and hire workers and craftsmen for temporary jobs (and so to give job opportunities for farmers), see
http://www.pesti.net; the Ministry of Labour gives information on vacancies on the net;
e) organic farming: there are around 100 home pages and rapid growth is expected;
f) events: there is a whole agro-industry oriented calendar of exhibitions, congresses, meetings etc. on the Agronet; an organiser of an event enters the necessary information using ready-made forms provided by the Internet;
g) plant protection: the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland provides some daily updated GIS based pest and disease forecasts and verbal plant protection advice for different crops, see
http://www.mtt.fi/ktl/ksu/ajankohtaista/;
h) plant production: the Agricultural Research Centre of Finland and the National Land Survey of Finland provide a joint yield forecast for barley, see
http://www.mtt.fi/gis/satoennuste; Kesko (a seed merchant) and some research institutes (e.g. Seed Potato Centre) provide full-text information on a number of agricultural crops, see
http://www.k-koetila.fi/k-lajike.htm and
http://www.agronet.fi/spk/; in some contract production cases the product quality of the respective agricultural crop is monitored via the Internet; case projects have been carried out on flax, carrot, lettuce, caraway and malt barley; the monitoring includes sowing, weed, pest and disease control, fertilisation, harvesting etc., see, e.g.
http://www.forssa.com/cultor/vilja.html;
i) management: the
Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry provides a variety of information services for farm management on the Internet; they include application forms for support and funding as well as forms for data collection and reporting, see
http://www.mmm.fi/tike/lomakkeet/lomakkeex.htm; a number of services support farm management, e.g. the official cattle register of the
Agricultural Data Processing Centre, see
http://vrs.mloy.fi/nautarek.htm;
j) databases: several current research information, publication and specialist databases are provided by, among others, the
Agricultural Research Centre of Finland and the
University of Helsinki, see, e.g.,
http://www.mtt.fi/english/database.html, http://www-db.helsinki.fi/tuhti/, http://www-db.helsinki.fi/triphome/agri/artikkelikirja/Welcome.html;
6. Factors affecting Internet uptake
In the above we showed the diverse possibilities available for Internet users. However, despite several promotional projects, and the wide range of services and material available, use of the Internet in practical agribusiness has not come up to expectations, and is low compared with the technology’s perceived potential and with use of the Internet in other business branches. To understand the gap between the potential and the achievements, we need to consider some general problems inherent in technology transfer and examine the nature of the barriers to technology diffusion.
The difficulties experienced in uptake of the Internet in agribusiness are not restricted to this brand of technology alone. The implementation of expert systems and routine decision support systems have also had very little success at farm level. The early developers of such systems now generally admit that they seriously underestimated the problems of technology transfer and the nature of the barriers to technology diffusion (see Caridad et al., 1996). They now understand that a major barrier to the adoption of such systems throughout the past decade has not been the availability of the technology, but the developers’ failure to understand the social, cultural, psychological and business aspects of a society’s reluctance to try new tools. From the user's point of view, the adoption of expert systems and Internet technology are analogous, so perhaps we should try to learn from their experiences.
Some of the social, cultural and business aspects related to adoption of the Internet technology were investigated by Ramstadius (1998). He found that the two key factors affecting customer satisfaction were reliability and the currency of the information provided. All the other factors were linked more closely to the nature of the service, and included the added value provided to the farmer’s business, availability and technical accessibility, versatility, stability and continuity of the services. To these we can add the aforementioned availability, technical functionality and cost of the necessary Internet fittings. The most crucial factor nevertheless is the farmer’s ability to use the new Internet technology. Combining these findings with the lessons learned by the developers of expert systems (see Caridad et al., 1996) we can state that:
( i ) an Internet application will be useful and viable when it is in frequent use and, even though some individual sessions will be fruitless, the long term results will be better with it than without it;
( ii ) at the development stage Internet service designers should work closely with the users to deepen the developers’ understanding of the process which they aim to support; and
( iii ) substantial effort must go into promoting uptake of the technology, as well as in planning simple systems and in planning long term support and development
7. Agronet - forerunner in promotion of Internet technology
Several national and regional projects to develop Internet services for farmers and extension officers are currently under way. Many of the projects are financed by the Ministry of the Interior. The forerunner in developing such services has, however, long been the Agronet project. Its recent activities intentionally focus on above social, cultural, psychological and business aspects connected with the agro-industry’s reluctance to adopt the new Internet technology. The main points of the Agronet strategy are:
( i ) To focus on frequently needed simple services likely to yield longer-term benefit. A leading service of the Agronet is an automatically updated list of agricultural links. It currently contains over 850 links, 650 of which are Finnish. The above study of Ramstadius (1998) exploring the key quality factors of an agricultural web site was conducted as part of this project, and much effort has been put into implementing the identified quality elements in the Agronet services.
( ii ) To focus on close co-operation between the users and the service designers during the whole development process of the new Internet services. In practice the developers work closely with test groups consisting of practising farmers and other rural people, and with groups such as milk producers, meat producers, crop producers, flax producers and producers of rural tourism services. These groups innovate and suggest potential new services and test their prototypes together with the developers, and receive training in use of the Internet. This training is also available for potential Internet users. To date, well over 200 rural people have been trained to use the Internet. Our experiences of this work are very positive and we are currently expanding the training to another target group of 200 people.
(iii) To focus on promoting the co-operative Agronet concept among all possible users and interest groups on every possible occasion, e.g., at agricultural schools, rural organisations, and agricultural fairs. The project has also made a long-term commitment to developing and supporting the Agronet as a common co-operative forum for the agro-industry. The project has expanded and grown steadily since it was set up in 1992.
The Agronet project has generated several auxiliary projects providing information for the Agronet. In general, such projects aim to produce information to be delivered via the Agronet. For example, the
Agricultural Research Centre is fostering a project called
MAATTI, which provides current research information on the Agronet.
8. Future perspectives
Use made of the Internet for agribusiness at farm level is small compared with the expectations, the technology’s perceived potential and the many projects promoting its uptake. In particular, the open vocational services designed by Internet experts do not seem to be very efficiently employed by farmers. Yet we must not jump to the conclusion that the Internet technology would not have great potential to provide added value to a farmer's business. It is just that the breakthrough is taking longer than foreseen by technology proponents. We should clearly pay more attention to the influence of social, cultural and business aspects on the adoption of forthcoming Internet services; technical problems play a minor role.
The currently available open vocational services are not finding an audience, unlike services designed jointly by well informed, strictly limited and coherent user groups and by socially, culturally and entrepreneurially capable data processing professionals. A typical example of a service for which expectations are high is the monitoring of a co-operative vegetable production chain via the Agronet. In this case, the production chain consists of 40 farmers using common marketing and advisory services. We also have good experiences of monitoring the cultivation practices of groups of malt barley and lettuce producers. Simple and useful applications can also be constructed by integrating the present Internet technology with the thriving GSM technology.
9. Conclusion
Micro computers are currently used by well over 50% of the Finnish farmers. Half of them use PCs for business related purposes. Most of this use consists of running standalone programs and has reached a relatively stable level. Depending on the source of information, current use of the Internet at farm level can be estimated to range from 15% to 22% of farms, but only some 3% or 4% of farmers use the Internet regularly for business related purposes. The occupational use may be considered small compared with the great number of projects providing vocational agricultural information and other relevant material for the Internet. Indeed, despite the wide variety of Internet services available, the use and importance of standalone legacy programs are still clearly outpacing the Internet use. We therefore conclude that the current Internet services have not yet broken down the social and cultural barriers preventing the Finnish agribusiness from exploiting the full potential of this new technology. More attention should be paid to overcoming the agro-industry’s natural reluctance to adopt new technological tools. The focus must be on simple services, close co-operation between users and service designers, promotion of the technology and services on all possible occasions, and continuous training of farmers and other rural people. There is also a need for tailored Internet services for coherent user groups. Moreover, as in any business, it is the task of the service producer to identify the real business needs of the potential interest groups, then design the services to meet these needs, and finally lure the potential users to use them.
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