Data management for transborder-farming

Transborder-farming means to farm small farm plots, which are situated side by side, crossing the existing boundaries of cultivation. This results in a more efficient production process and in increased gross margin. A precondition is an agreement between the participating farmers regarding common crop rotations and cultivation dates. In a research project, transborder-farming has been put into practice to investigate the economic effects and to develop a convenient management system. To document all field work, an automated data acquisition system is needed. It is made up of an automatic process data acquisition system, which has been developed at the Technical University Munich and includes a DGPS receiver and the data processing software, which has been developed within this project. This system delivers process data at a high spatiotemporal resolution and the data management software enables transborder-farming without the noticeable requirement for extra management tasks. Beyond handling transborder-farming the collected data are used for an initial verification that increasing field sizes result in decreasing labour and machinery costs.