ICT in Rural Areas from the Perspective of Dairy Farming: A Systematic Review

Abstract

This study presents a systematic review of 169 papers concerning the ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) related to rural areas, specifically to dairy farms. The objective was to delve into the relationship between dairy farmers and the administrative authorities via e-government, comparing this area to another eight concerning the farmer’s needs and expectations in relation to the ICT in different fields of their business. We observed that areas such as connectivity and digital inclusion are the most covered areas not only at the study level but also at the government level since countries all over the world are trying to develop politics to put an end to the so-called “digital divide,” which affects rural areas more intensely. This is increasing due to the growing technological innovations. The areas of the market, production, financial development, management and counseling, Smart Farming, and Internet of Things have been approached, associated with the ICT in dairy farms, showing in the latter two an increasing number of papers in the last few years. The area of public administration in relation to dairy farms has also been covered, being remarkable the low number of pieces of research concerning the interaction by the farmers, more specifically by dairy farmers, with the public administration, which is surprising due to the new global need and especially in the European Union (EU) of interacting with it telematically by all legal entities. The results show that there are still barriers to the implementation of the electronic government (e-government) since the websites do not meet the user’s expectations. Therefore, this study lays the ground for future research on this area. As a graphical abstract of the contributions of this paper, we present a graphic summary, where the different contributions by areas and expressed in percentage values are shown.

Factors associated with the adoption of mobile applications (Apps) for the management of dairy herds

“…ICT have become essential tools for education, entertainment, and organizations, providing strategies oriented to digital literacy and digital skills (Vázquez-López et al, 2021). In the business sector, they have provided benefits such as increased profitability, access to realtime information for decision making and direct communication with other agents in the value chain (Clarke Modet & Co, 2014).…”

Potential Benefits of Crowd-Collaborative Farming in Sustaining Small Scale Dairy Farming Business Performance

“…To address the lack of access to extension officers in small-scale dairy farming, Steinke et al (2021) highlight the novelty of harnessing the power of digital media. Despite the countless potential of crowdsourcing in the agricultural sector, the small-scale dairy industry has yet to experience the full potential of crowdsourcing (Wulandari & Rahmah, 2020;Vázquez-López et al, 2021). Other studies also highlighted the adoption of community-supported agriculture (CSA) due to its consequence in proliferating rural economic growth and contributing towards sustainable agriculture and food sufficiency (Morgan et al, 2018;Samoggia et al, 2019;Sulistyowati et al, 2023), other researchers (Velten et al, 2021;Dung et al, 2022;Tran et al, 2022;El Fartassi et al, 2023) also highlighted using CF opportunities to mitigate unviability in the agricultural activities, yield high returns, and improve farmers' resilience.…”

Can Livestock Farming Benefit from Industry 4.0 Technology? Evidence from Recent Study

“…The data networks in rural regions are often not powerful enough to ensure direct access to data networks in dairy cow barns. Additionally, there are other aspects relevant for successfully integrated digitalization in rural areas [87,88] and for a sustainable food system [89][90][91][92].…”