SAC Research

In Scotland two types of tools were being developed to deliver demand driven information to farmers through the use of mobile phone services and internet systems.  These were developed as a result of the consultations with end-users through a number of focus groups. With most farmers now using a mobile phone, technology provides a means to send important business information and advice directly to subscribers, with the messages being read conveniently. As a result, SMEs should be well informed with the most up-to-date industry information ensuring they can keep one step ahead of their competitors.  A number of projects have been developing this idea and these are largely in their infancy and are largely only available to fee-paying subscribers (or members) of core services.

SMS services

SAC’s Farmtext is a service that uses mobile phone messaging facilities to offer up to the minute advice directly to farmers in their own workplace. This project was originally piloted with financial assistance from the LEADER+ Programme to assess the quality and relevance of the service.  A team of specialist advisers can provide text messages on a range of topics, from important deadline reminders to brief and concise technical information.  Using a simple database, text messages up to 150 characters long can be prepared by an adviser and sent out on a particular to a specified audience (e.g. determined by the farmer’s preferences and location).  Farmers in the original pilot have commented specifically that reminders on important dates have proved invaluable.  The National Farmers Union of Scotland also offers a similar service to its members providing subscribers SMSs about events, meetings and important news. 

The idea of this tool was to establish the potential for these services in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland where mobile network coverage has been limited (patchy) until recently. Given the recent adoption of mobile technologies by farmers in this region, there is considerable potentially benefits from dissemination of such a tool to have a high impact for farmers and crofters in the Highland and Islands.  Issues such as frequency of messages, appropriate message content, need for local input were examined as were issues such as duplication of services, gaps in information and advice being examined.  The logic behind the tool was that the target group were largely unaware of such possibilities (the technology lag of rural areas) and it was apparent from the user group that there was scope for this type of service to be provided collaboratively between the key agents delivering government funded advice and services to the agricultural sector. 

The perception of the farmers after the testing was that the long term sustainability of such services would be best served by an integrated approach between agencies, since they did not like receiving too many SMS messages (especially when there was duplication).  They found the services very easy to use and liked the fact that they could select topic and geographically specific information meaning it was slightly tailored to their circumstances.  They reported that there was considerable variation in the “average” number of SMS received weekly but realised that appreciated that this was related to topical issues and dates in the farming calendar.  The depth of the messages was somewhat limited and some felt that this was perhaps too restrictive to have real impact in their business life.  However, they all agreed that the service was very useful to get updates about administrative (CAP) deadlines and legislative issues.  They also felt that use as a diary reminder was very helpful, particularly at busy times of the year, giving them warning about up-and-coming local and regional events which they were interested in.  Another positive feedback concerned the specific advice from specialists in relation to livestock and crop management activities which many said had an effect on their business.  On the element of cost there was mixed feeling about whether they would pay for these services out-with their normal annual subscription charge to a wider range of services.  On one hand some felt the specialist advice would be worth paying for on a limited basis as it the service stood but few would pay for stand alone SMS about news updates that they may read in the weekly trade press (they did not feel it necessary to be one-step-ahead with respect to these matters). An issue that was raised was about how to make the service more interactive, where the farmer could engage (ask for clarification, or submit questions) with the specialist advisers. This is something that is being examined to make improvements to the services.

Another key finding of this test was that the farmers identified that the agency responsible for monitoring river levels should be using such a system to deliver flood warnings to farmers as they are currently issued by fax and phone calls to land lines, meaning if the farmer is “in-the-field” these warnings can be received “after-the-event”.  This issue of flood warnings is very important issue for farmers in the Highlands and Islands where livestock production is the norm, with many flood plains being used for grazing livestock in the “flood season”. 

Some of the farmers also subscribed to the recently developed weekly SMS agriculture updates offered by the Scottish Executive (this was one of the tools that was discussed with Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department (SEERAD) personnel during project meetings and project updates) and to BBC regional news feeds sent by SMS.  The feedback from the farmers was that they felt that business advisers would benefit more from using this type of “news” SMS as it was felt that there were only a limited number of headlines which were of particular interest to the farmers.  Business advisers and also subscribed to this news service, but many felt that there was limited scope for this unless they were out of their office for a prolonged period (in such circumstances they found it useful).

Bespoke news feeds
The second tool that was developed in Scotland was the use of is syndicated news feeds, specifically Really Simple Syndication (RSS -  ).  This relatively recent internet based format designed for sharing headlines and other web content that allows users to create a customised feed to track any topics they specify.  In this age with billions of web pages, if rural SMEs track news from multiple online sources or need to stay informed on specific subjects, it can be a challenge for them to keep up with all the latest news and most recent updates.  Use of RSS simplifies this allowing them to identify the content they want and have it delivered directly to them taking the hassle out of staying up-to-date especially as most web users are interested in dynamic websites whose content changes regularly.  Repeatedly checking each website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.  E-mail notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized and can get overwhelming, and are often mistaken for spam.  The research team, in consultation with our test groups felt that RSS was a better way to be notified of new and changed content.  Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, and the results are presented to you well organized and distinct from email.
Some commonly mentioned uses are:

• Notification of the arrival of new products
• Listing and notifying you of newsletter issues, including email newsletters 
• Weather and other alerts of changing conditions 
• Notification of additions of new items to a database, or new members to a group

A key benefit of this tool is that the end user does not actually have to know anything about the technology in order to benefit from it with some benefits to accessing information this way identified as being:

• Efficiency -  timely news and information is automatically there when needed
• Breadth - headlines from the web sources chosen by the user
• Organisation - sources can be displayed in order of importance with the latest news on top
• Productivity - email newsletter subscriptions and unruly bookmarks can lead to clutter and information overload

RSS was first established in 1999 but only recently has it become popular as a means of publishing and retrieving frequently updated internet content, such as news sites.  It uses software programs called "feed readers" or "feed aggregators" and the user subscribes to a “feed” by entering a link of the feed into the reader program.  The reader can then check the user's subscribed feeds automatically to see if any of those feeds have new content since the last time it was checked and, if so, retrieve that content and present it to the user.  The RSS feed basically contains a list of pieces of information with each piece of information in the list containing a title, a web link and an optional longer description.  Many news readers are available for free and RSS aggregation is built into modern web browsers, such as Windows Internet Explorer 7.0, Mac OS X Tiger's Safari, and Firefox.  Sites like Google's email service, Gmail, and Yahoo’s e-mail allow enable users to subscribe to feeds which show up on the user’s homepage. However users can also use standalone RSS readers such as Feedreader for Windows or NetNewsWire Lite for Mac OS X.  These standalone readers bring news feeds directly to the user’s desktop, automatically providing alerts and summaries when new articles become available.

When this tool was first considered for the RuBIES project very few websites provided RSS feeds, but it has since grown rapidly in popularity and many public/government bodies and news providers are now providing RSS feeds.  The reason for choosing this tool for the project was that it enabled the users to subscribe to information feeds they specifically wanted (demand driven) after downloading, or registering with a reader.  At the outset of the test the issue for the test groups was how to find feeds they were interested in subscribing to.  We advised them to look at the problem from the opposite direction by going to the web sites they knew had content that they liked to read and see if they published an RSS feed.  More and more web sites are now advertising the fact that they publish RSS with the RSS icon   or the XML icon   (RSS is a kind of XML).  These icons are a link to the RSS version of the current page and the user can right-click their mouse on the icon to copy and paste the "link" into their news reader.  This process became much simpler over the life of the project and now users simply need to click the icon, which takes them to a RSS feed page with an option to subscribe to that feed (for a good description of RSS, benefits and how to use it the following video stream from CNET is very useful http://www.cnet.com/av/video/flash/rss_tutorial.html?tag=video).

An additional benefit of the RSS tool is that it allows content to be republished on other websites. This is how tools like Yahoo or Google News work, collecting RSS feeds from across the internet and then publish the relevant ones on their site. RSS feeds are now very important for “portals” and will clearly bean an integral part of the proposed Single Information Portal for Scottish agriculture announced by the Scottish Executive.

The biggest problem we encountered with this “pilot” was that initially there were limited websites providing RSS feeds, and even less for farming related topics.  The feeds from those sites that did were considered very useful by the test groups since they allowed them easy access to news stories and information about upcoming events from multiple sources.  The key to the successful implementation of this tool for the end-users was initially thought to be getting the key providers of agricultural information and news in Scotland to provide RSS feeds, and provide them into categories that allow specific farming topics to be chosen (e.g. CAP policy, sheep, beef, dairy, crops, etc).  However, although this has been very important and useful, it was evident that the time-scale to implement IT projects at an institutional scale is often considerably longer than anticipated, with various committees and authorisations required before implementation.  Thus the importance of developing bespoke feeds and the creation of a simple “how to” guide (which includes access to the bespoke feeds created during the RUBIES project) grew in importance in order to facilitate uptake of this useful tool amongst the wider user group.  There are possibilities to widen the scope of this RSS tool with many new generation mobile phones allowing subscription to RSS feeds meaning that users have multiple options for keeping informed.  Feedback was very good about the end-product and the ease of use, although a time lag was often reported concerning familiarisation with the technology, and procedures.  A main finding from the testing was that most of the user groups found it very difficult to use the software packages which enable these bespoke feeds to be created.  However, it was acknowledged that the later versions of such software are becoming more and more “user-friendly” and confidence in creating these bespoke feeds grew throughout the project as the technological developments of this new type of tool gathered pace.

Contact

Add to Address Book | Help