GIEA: farm information management - Towards a general standardization of the agricultural data for the farm and its economic and institutional partners

Abstract

In order to satisfy the requests of his economic and institutional partners, the farmer is brought to devote more and more time to collect and transmit all kinds of information about his activity. To increase the difficulty, the information required is generally disconnected from its real practices regarding farms management. This common noting with the agricultural profession led the CEMAGREF during the year 2003 to form a partnership with the Permanent Assembly of the Chambers of Agriculture (APCA) within a project called GIEA (Gestion des informations de l'exploitation agricole) for the farms information management with the assistance of the Ministry of agriculture, foods, fisheries and rural affairs and the Agency for Environment and Energy Management (Ademe). The main objective of the GIEA project is to reach a general standardization of the agricultural data both fulfilling the farmers technical and environmental management needs and the economic and institutional partners requests and more particularly the requirements of the French system of reference for integrated farming. This article presents the prospects opened by this project and explains the methods and strategies that will be implemented to answer the identified constraints and to overcome the difficulties link with the sometimes antagonistic requirements of the various actors.