Possibilities of Using Decision Support Systems for Agriculture in Areas with High Agrarian Fragmentation

Assessment of the usefulness of functions available within cloud-based farm management systems in the surveyed farms in general and depending on selected farm and respondents’ characteristics [% of responses]

Specification	Total	Farms with an area of up to 4 ha	Farms with an area of over 4 ha	Respondents with agricultural education	Respondents with education other than agricultural	Users of at least one decision support system in total (n=127)	Not using decision support systems (n=262)
Possibility to receive information about the risk of plant infection/disease	77.63	65.83	90.00	91.27	70.99	100.00	66.79
Access to an accurate weather forecast for individual agricultural plots	61.95	48.24	76.32	80.95	52.67	92.91	46.95
Possibility to estimate the consumption of raw materials (e.g. consumption of seed, plant protection products, fodder)	61.70	42.71	81.58	86.51	49.62	96.85	44.66
Yield prediction (depending on the resources used, detailed weather forecasts)	58.61	39.20	78.95	80.95	47.71	95.28	40.84
Collecting and storing data sent by sensors about soil moisture, air temperature, and nutrient content in crops	55.27	35.18	76.32	80.16	43.13	95.28	35.88
Remote information exchange with other farmers	48.33	31.66	65.79	68.25	38.55	81.10	32.44
Records of sales, inventories, payments, profits	47.56	24.62	71.58	72.22	35.50	91.34	26.34
Research on the impact of farm activities on the natural environment	37.28	20.10	55.26	61.90	25.19	77.17	17.94
Possibility to collect and process information from systems tracking animals’ behaviour, condition and physical activity	32.13	13.57	51.58	58.73	19.08	66.93	15.27
Remotely assigning tasks to employees	19.54	5.53	34.21	38.89	9.92	51.97	3.82
Remotely receiving information from employees (about the progress of work, problems)	19.28	5.53	33.68	38.10	9.92	50.39	4.20

The area structure of the surveyed farms in comparison to Poland

Area	Number of farms [GUS, 2020]	Farm structure by size [%]
		up to 1 ha inclusive	1 – 5 ha	5 – 10 ha	10 – 15 ha	15 ha and more
Poland	1 316 759	1.87	50.15	21.95	9.91	16.12
Małopolskie voivodeship	126 172	2.54	78.37	13.24	2.79	3.06
Podkarpackie voivodeship	114 182	2.30	76.86	13.75	2.96	4.14
Farms surveyed	389	x	62.98	20.05	7.20	9.77

Characteristics of respondents and surveyed farms in the group in general and depending on farm size [% of responses]

Specification		Farm size
		Total	≤ 4ha	>4ha
Age	up to 35	10.80	11.56	10.00
	35–50	39.59	32.16	47.37
	>50	49.61	56.28	42.63
Respondents’ education	Elementary	6.43	9.55	3.16
	Vocational agricultural	16.71	9.05	24.74
	Vocational other than agricultural	26.99	36.68	16.84
	Secondary agricultural	14.14	3.02	25.79
	Secondary other than agricultural	23.65	28.64	18.42
	Higher agricultural	1.80	0.00	3.68
	Higher other than agricultural	10.28	13.07	7.37
Employment	On the farm exclusively	58.61	45.73	72.11
	On and off the farm	41.39	54.27	27.89
Organisational form	Individual farm	99.74	100.00	99.47
	Agricultural enterprise	0.26	0.00	0.53
Type of farm	Conventional Farm	96.14	97.49	94.74
	Organic farm	2.83	2.51	3.16
	Farm with integrated production	1.03	0.00	2.10
Dominant production direction	Crop production	79.18	90.95	67.08
	Animal production	20.57	9.05	32.92

Barriers to the use of decision support applications and cloud-based farm management systems in the study group in general and depending on selected farm and respondents’ characteristics [% of responses]

Specification	Total	Farms with an area of up to 4 ha	Farms with an area of over 4 ha	Respondents up to 50 years of age	Respondents over 50 years of age	Respondents with agricultural education	Respondents with education other than agricultural
Financial barrier	55.01	37.19	73.68	66.84	43.01	78.57	43.51
The belief that there is no need to implement such solutions	43.19	67.34	17.89	26.02	60.62	15.87	56.49
Hardware shortages	38.05	26.63	50.00	47.45	28.50	55.56	29.39
The need to improve IT skills	22.11	9.05	35.79	26.02	18.13	31.75	17.56
Lack of trust in such systems and their creators	19.02	20.60	17.37	9.69	28.50	11.11	22.90
Technical problems (the quality of local infrastructure makes it difficult to access high-speed Internet)	16.20	11.56	21.05	23.47	8.81	27.78	10.69
These systems are not intuitive/difficult to use	16.20	5.03	27.89	21.43	10.88	26.19	11.45
Lack of systems that fully meet the needs of farm (too few options available)	13.11	7.54	18.95	20.41	5.70	18.25	10.69
Lack of knowledge of such solutions until taking part in the study	12.85	19.10	6.32	5.10	20.73	9.52	14.50
Lack of access to training in the use of this type of solutions	8.23	1.51	15.26	12.24	4.15	15.87	4.58
Concern about sharing agricultural activity data with applications	7.46	4.02	11.05	8.16	6.74	8.73	6.87
Lack of time to learn how these systems work	5.66	3.52	7.89	7.14	4.15	7.94	4.58
I do not see any barriers to using these solutions	1.29	1.01	1.58	2.04	0.52	0.79	1.53

Chi square test of independence results

Criterion	χ2
Assessing the usability of cloud-based farm management system features
Farm size (up to 4 ha; over 4 ha)	28,91*
Education type (agricultural; non-agricultural)	21,39*
Use of decision support systems (Yes; No)	48,80*
Assessment of Barriers to Implementation of Decision Support Systems
Age (up to 50; under 50)	97,55*
Farm size (up to 4 ha; over 4 ha)	65,92*
Education type (agricultural; non-agricultural)	64,36*