ARSI UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF NATURAL AND COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
Project Proposal
Project Title: Web-based Farming
Prepared by:-

No Name ID Email Phone

1. Milion Nugusie Alemu CCS/UR7747/11 milion12041997@gmail.com 0934957729

2. Samuel Rabuma Dabasa CCS/UR7759/11 Samuelrabuma1@gmail.com 0930655988

3. Tahir Dekamo kabaso CCS/UR7761/11 tahirdekamo1@gmail.com 0982031893

4. Negasa Birhanu Aredo CCS/UR7751/11 rabbirranegasa@gmail.com 0918911279

5. Helen Tilahun Feleke CCS/UR7794/11 helentilahun54@gmail.com 0954680558

December 20, 2021

Arsi Asella, Ethiopia

Acronym and Abbreviation
GB Giga Byte
RAM Random Access Memory
HTML Hyper Text Markup Language
CSS Cascading Style Sheet
PHP Preprocessor Hypertext Preprocessor
MS Word Microsoft Word
ETB Ethiopian Birr
NGO Non-Governmental Organization
GHz Giga Hertz
CPU Central Processing Unit
XAMPP Xerox Apache MySQL Perl PHP
WAMP Window Apache MySQL PHP
MySQL My Standard Query Language
MS_ppt Microsoft Power Point
HCI Human Computer Interaction

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 List of Tables
Table 1 Hardware Tools --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
Table 2 Software Tools ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9
Table 3 Cost of material and tools --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------13

List of Figures
Figure 1 Gantt chart--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12

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Table of Contents

Acronym and Abbreviation................................................................................................................. I

List of Tables .................................................................................................................................... II
List of Figures ................................................................................................................................... II
1.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1
1.2. Background of the Organization ................................................................................................. 1
1.3. Existing System Description ....................................................................................................... 2
1.4. Problem of Existing System........................................................................................................ 3
1.5. Proposed System Description ..................................................................................................... 4
1.6. Objectives of the Proposed System .............................................................................................. 5
1.6.1. General Objectives ............................................................................................................... 5
1.6.2. Specific Objectives ............................................................................................................... 5
1.7. Scope ........................................................................................................................................... 5
1.7.1. Scope Out ............................................................................................................................. 5
1.7.2. Scope In ................................................................................................................................ 6
1.8. Methodologies and Tools ............................................................................................................ 8
1.8.1. Methodologies ...................................................................................................................... 8
1.8.2. Tools ..................................................................................................................................... 9
1.9 Significant of the Project .......................................................................................................... 10
1.10. Work Plan (Time Table) .................................................................................................... 11
1.11. Cost..................................................................................................................................... 12
References ........................................................................................................................................ 14

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 Chapter one

1.1. Introduction
Technology is spreading its wing in almost every walks of human life activities. Now a day it is
better if every activity is done using new technology in order to fulfill the need of human being,
Organization, Enterprise etc. In today’s world there are many organizations and each organizations
needs to be preferable, computable and work on fastest way in order to satisfy users interest etc. i.e.
they should have facilitate their activities in computerized way.
Farming is also one of the activities of human being and it is back bone of economy in most of
developing countries in this world. However, most of its activity is yet not depends on emerging
technology. This in turns affect efficiency of farming and economic growth of countries. In our
country Ethiopia also many of farming related activities is not based on new technology. In some
places many years ago there is a farmers union, which provides services for a farmer and integrates
farmers of different areas. But, those farmers union were not able to purchase new technologies in
order to increase their efficiencies and advance their activities. This has effects on their performance
and in some areas of our country they are even not able to give the desired services for farmers. To
overcome those and other farming related problems there must be an automated system which help
farmers to access information on each of their activities and markets too; in our case Web Based
Farming system.
Web based Farming System is the farming system where they can plan, monitor and analyze the
activity of the farmers production system. It manages farmer operation with one system and
organizes data in one place. It helps farmer to access updated information on their products market
and materials they needed. It helps smart farmers become even smarter.
The aim is to automate its existing manual system by the help of computerized equipment and full-
fledged computer software, fulfilling their requirements, so that their valuable data/information can
be stored for a longer period with easy accessing and manipulation of the same. Basically the project
describes how to manage good performance and better services for the clients.

1.2. Background of the Organization

The history of formal farmer union in Ethiopia dates back to 1960, when the first cooperatives’
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directive was enacted. Since this time cooperative policy and law has undertaken many reforms and
cooperatives have come to play a crucial role in economic and social development. The social role
of cooperatives is ensured through voicing of common goals via cooperative farmer unions,
enhanced participation in value chains and protection of producers from unfair pricing. However,
the functioning and development of cooperatives and their support institutions is constrained by
frequent reform, shortage of skilled human resources and limited awareness of cooperative
approaches to development. Farmer's cooperative unions are formed by two or more primary
societies who have similar activities to undertake those activities, which are beyond the capacity of
primary societies. The owners of these organizations are the individual farmers who have formed
the member primary societies. They have geographical boundary and economic viability. Farmer's
cooperative unions are managed by general assembly whose members came from the member
primary cooperative societies. The general assembly delegates its power for democratically elected
management committee, control committee and others. The manager and other staff are employed
by the management committee to undertake the recurrent activities. The major activities of the
cooperative unions are marketing of members’ produce in the local and international market,
providing market information, supplying agricultural inputs in bulk and provision of transportation,
storage and credit services for the member primary cooperative societies. Unions provide multiple
services to their members.

1.3. Existing System Description

In the existing system every activity including collecting data, analysis of market, report generating,
selling and purchasing of materials, and consulting service are performed manually. During this
activity the organization needs certain number of employees to manage the overall function of the
system. That means a number of different actors can be incorporated in the existing system.
In generally the existing system has the following function:
 Collect data about farmers need and want.
 Based on collected data generate report for concerning body.
 Facilitate farming activity by providing basic inputs such as Fertilizer, Packages
of seed, Chemicals and farming related materials.
 Modify submitted crop production report data.
 Record crop production in document.
 Submit the record crop production report.
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  View comment based on the reported data.
 Provides advice services for farmers.

The actor involved in the existing system:

 Farmer (union members)
 Manager
 Extension worker.
 Agricultural technicians

1.4. Problem of Existing System

In many cases web based system has brought new opportunities to the government, non-government
organization, and even to individual person. Indeed to this, starting from mid of 1990’s a number of
organizations began to publish their own web site on the network to offers their services and to
announce their products online to the customers. Moreover use it to facilitate their activities that
enhance to achieve mission and vision and become more competent and profitable.
There is also not centralized database management system; this in turns cause the loss of data for
different activities like research, data analysis, data interpretation and conclusion for report issues.
So, Most of cooperative farmers union are far from these realities because of most of their activities
are enrolling manual through manpower. Generally as a result some of the prominent problems
current method has the following:
 Lack of updated information on how to use chemicals and their formal prices.
 Lack of market information about supply and demand of farming.
 Delay of information and material supply.
 File mixed each other (misplaced) which create difficult and time consuming to search.
 Human power: - For transformation of information from office to office human power is
needed and this is one of the problems.
 Persistent data storage and management is difficult.
 Decrease in data completeness, data redundancy, and even data loss.
 Since farming covers more than half of country income, it has impact on growth of
economy.
 Requires labors that will do the data collection, information and material delivery.
 Data collection is not accurate and it is not based on timely manner.

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  Since everything is done manually by individual worker, the number of employees is
high, it turn makes to allocate high budget for employee’s salary.
 Agricultural data about crop production report is not accurate.
 Manual collection of crop data is time consuming and tedious.
 Searching of data is very difficult.
 File mixed each other (misplaced file). .
 Persistent data storage and management is difficult.
 Decrease in data completeness.
 Wastages of resource like pen, paper, etc.
 Data redundancy and inconsistency happens.

1.5. Proposed System Description

The proposed system is a new system that is a web based farming system. The aim of proposed
system is to develop a system of improved facilities. The proposed system can overcome all the
limitations of the existing system. The system provides proper security and reduces the manual work
and help farmers to convey information and resources related to their activities. The proposed
system can overcome most of the limitations of the existing system. The system provides proper
security and reduces the manual work; reduce time and resource needed in the existing system, and
the capital that will be invested. We hope such system will brought our country’s farming one step
forward towards technology. This will give almost all of the functionalities that the existing system
gives in easier way and minimize the hierarchical structure.
In general the proposed system has the following importance.
 It helps farmers to produce based on consultation of agricultural technicians.
 It helps to make cooperation between farmers of different experiences from different
sections.
 It minimizes the time required to do the task.
 Minimizes the capital that will be invested.
 Minimizes the human resource used.
 Makes the task easy and interactive.
 It will be user friendly the users can use it easily and interactively.
 Ensures accuracy of data.

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  Minimizes manual data entry.
 Keep Security of data.
 Ensure data accuracy’s.
 Proper control of the higher officials.
 Minimize manual data entry.
 Minimum time needed for the various processing.
 Provides better service with great efficiency.
 Minimize time required.

1.6. Objectives of the Proposed System

1.6.1. General Objectives

The general objective of our project is to change the manual system to automated Web based
Farming System for Farmers Union.

1.6.2. Specific Objectives

The aim of this project is to develop a secured Web based system with the following specific
objectives:
 Identify the problems of the existing system.
 Perform requirement analysis.
 Design the architecture for the proposed system.

 Implementing an automated/online Farming system.

 To inspire farmer to produce quality goods and supply.

 Eco-friendly farming system.

 Develop user friendly and interactive system.

 Testing how the system works under a variety of conditions
 Demonstrate the potential of the system for further application and scalability.

1.7. Scope

1.7.1. Scope Out

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Although we proposed best efforts to make the system flexible, easy to operate but limitations
cannot be ruled out even at all. Though the system will presents a broad range of options to its users
some intricate options will not be covered into it; partly because of logistic and partly due to lack of
sophistication. Paucity of time is also major constraint, thus it is not possible to make the system
foolproof and dynamic. Lack of time also compelled us to ignore some part such as storing old
result of the candidate etc. Considerable efforts will make the system easy to operate even for the
people not related to the field of computers but it is acknowledged that a layman may find it a bit
problematic at the first instance. The user will provided help at each step for his convenience in
working with the system.
Below are some of scopes excluded from system:

 System language: our system is going to be developed in only English language, which may
be difficult for user.

 Paper based report generation, manual based data collection and analysis can be ignored as if
it has resource extravagancy in existing system.
1.7.2. Scope In
Web-based farming system is supposed to assist farmers and Farmers unions in achieving “best
practice” agricultural outcomes. It is used all over the agricultural industry to manage resources,
increase yields, reduce input costs, predict outcomes, and more. The powerful analytical capabilities
allow for the examination of farm conditions and monitor the effects of farm management practices,
including crop yield estimates and soil amendment analyses. It can be also used to reduce farm input
costs such as fertilizer, seed, labor, and transportation. In addition, farm managers can use the
platform to automatically generate reports required by law. The system is built to fulfill diverse
project requirements. It includes several easy-to-use modules with localized user-interface.
It may help collecting perfect management in details. In a very short time, the collection will be
obvious, simple and sensible. It will help a person to know the management of passed year perfectly
and strongly. It also helps in current all works relative to Farm Management System. It will be also
reduced the cost of collecting the management and collection procedure will go on smoothly.
Our project aims at Business process automation, i.e. we will try to computerize various processes
of Farming System.
Here the below are the some scopes going to be included in our system:

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Online market: This Online market deals with selling and purchasing of farm products and farm
input materials. When we say this without any time consuming and resource extravagant farmers
can buy farming related inputs and sell their products. One of our system main features is this online
market.
Data collection and processing: This feature of our system mainly deals with collecting data
from different sectors, analyzing, and generating different reports and conclusion.
For illustration farmers can view what chemicals, fertilizers, and seed package can exist with their
full information.
Secured and functional system: since in our system every user can have username and
password, which make system and personal information of user secured from access by other user.
System we are going to develop can be fully functional as the preexisting system and some features
can be added to existing one in order to satisfy user requirement. Generally user who has no account
cannot have more control on this system.
Easy, Interactive, fast and well-designed User interface: This part of our system is
mainly concerns with what we have learned in our HCI course. User interface of system going to be
developed will be highly interactive and easy to interact with, which means user can predict future
of interface from the previous action. In addition to this it will be well designed by considering
individual difference and customer’s cultural view point; i.e. color of buttons, design and layout of
user interface will be in consideration. Our system interaction and response time can be very fast in
contrast with preexisting system. This can be achieved by preparing modules separately for each and
every user of system.
Auto update and storage of data: no need of updating data manually incase system will be
designed as certain action performed. I.e. while transaction of materials takes place system will
increase and decrease amount of materials and auto update data in database. For e.g. when 5L of
Herbicide sold system decrease 5L from amount of herbicides existing in store. The same is true for
purchasing. This enables access and efficient control of resources.
Online consultancy services: This consultancy service will be given by agricultural
technicians and extension workers for farmers on how to properly use resources and increase their
productivity.
Provision of updated information: this service will be given for farmers in order to

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announce information on prices of input materials and their main products.
Learnability of system: systems help page will be developed in order to make awareness for
user on how to interact with each part of system and attached to each page of system. So system can
teach itself for user.
1.8. Methodologies and Tools

1.8.1. Methodologies
The data collection instruments may use to gather accurate information about the existing system
and the requirements for the new system. Interviews and questionnaires will be administered to
Stakeholders like Farmers, Extension workers and Farmers union officer to collect user
requirements. Observation of the current existing system will done at the Farmers union office in
order to find out how the existing system functions, the problems encountered and how they can be
solved by the new computerized system.
To get a precise data, the team member has will use the following data collection techniques.
Those are: -
A. Interview: - to get the basic information and background information about the existing
management system, the team members will be interviewed the farmers and some
technicians about the services that are given to them, and the problems associated with that
environment.
B. Direct observation: even though interview is very important to gather information, direct
observation is simple and project team members have to physically observe information that
cannot maintain from the interview or others and also it is important if they are unable to
communicate with others because of the difficulties they have to the language.
C. Questionnaires: since Union managers as well as higher officials of union have work load
they cannot able to answer/give information what we ask. So we will prepare some sample
questions to get précised information.
D. Existing document: To get more information about the project we will use earlier
documents that help us to develop the project. During the analysis of documents, we give a
special consideration to those documents which can bring more features to the project.

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 1.8.2. Tools
While developing the project starts from the documentation to the implementation we will use the
following case tools:
Hardware Tools
TOOLS ACTIVITIES
Flash disk with >=8 GB To transfer data from one computer to the other computer.
Used for recovery purpose.

Both desktop and laptop To input data, to display the output, to do the main programs and to
computer with >=4 GB insert input and to store information.
RAM and 500 GB (this
specifications are a
minimum requirement)
Printer For print the documentation.
Ethernet cable Used for connection to access different information that helps our
projects.
Table 1 Hardware Tools

Software Tools
TOOLS ACTIVITIES
Html Client side coding run on web browser.

JavaScript Client side script runs on web browser.

CSS Client side CSS run on web browser, used for
font, color and border and pagination.
MySQL Database server
PHP Server side scripting run on web server.
Chrome, Internet explorer, Opera mini Browser
Notepad++, Sublime_Text_2.0.2 It is one of the writing editors which help us to
write code using PHP programming language.
MS Word For write documentation part.
MS_ppt For presentation purpose.
Edraw Max To draw different diagrams.
Table 2 Software Tools

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 1.9 Significant of the Project
A Web-based Farming can increase resilience because it can deliver information to help farmers
quickly address unanticipated challenges (such as about closed borders or markets) and facilitate
actions to solve problems related to accessing inputs, services, customers, or emergency aid. These
benefits can lead to reduced costs and increased productivity for individual farmers. For example,
aggregating demand for inputs can lower costs and even increase productivity, since input providers
have a stronger incentive to make timely deliveries for optimal application of inputs aligned with the
crop cycle, improving the precision of agronomic practices that can lead to higher yields. The
organization will obviously be able to gain benefits such as savings in operating cost, reduction in
paperwork, better utilization of human resources and more presentable image increasing goodwill.
Any project to be design to gives service for the user to simplify statement of problem. So the main
target beneficiaries of the system in this section described:
 Farmers: Farmers are highly benefited from this project, because the main target of our
project is farmer. They will able to access information about fertilizers, Packages of seed,
Chemicals, overall market of both crop and chemicals, online consultation service from
agricultural extension workers and etc. In addition to this, farmers can share their
experiences and achievements with each other.
 Union Workers: The next highly benefited from this proposed system will be union
workers. Because in proposed system they are not expected to manually search data and
generate reports for concerning body, they have not updated information on the materials
and crop prices which cause them the fluctuation of market, to gather information about
particular event they are not expected to avail themselves over that place instead they did it
online.
 Researchers: get information about crop production and types crops found in that union
from the system easily and it is also base lines for researchers for modification the system by
adding additional activities occurred in the organization.
 Extension workers: by using the system extension workers can save their time and effort to
register crop product information, to search item they want easily and easy ways to record
data in data base without loss of information.
 Agricultural offices: get report within a time and small resource for the offices and generate
report easily by searching information stored in data base. It also knows types of crops found

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 in areas covered under that union. They will also able to purchase seed packages, fertilizers,
Agro-chemicals, and other materials in amount compatible with farmers need. This in turn
reduces the extravagancy or shortage of supply materials.
 NGO’s

In general the system has the following benefits:

 Easy to search the recorded data.
 The system can be accessed everywhere in the organization in the given time
frame.
 Provide timely information.
 Reduce resource wastage.
 Easy Data storage and management.
 Reducing the probability of errors.
 Potentially increasing data security.
 Easy to generate report.
 Reduce wastage of time.
 Easy to manipulate and maintain the system.
 Increase means of communication between offices workers.
 Reduce data loss.
 Easy to backup and restores if the document has to be damaged.

1.10. Work Plan (Time Table)

Our project contains list of activities, number of days used to accomplish a task with its start and
end date, deliverables of each phase. The figure below describes time schedule of or project is the
following Gantt chart. A Gantt chart illustrates how the project will run. It communicates with the
client and shows them the expected date of project completion. It helps you assess how long a
project should take, determine the resources needed, and plan the order in which you'll complete
task.
NB Week 1-3 is Dec 03, 2021-Dec 18, 2021.
Week 3-5 is Dec 18, 2021-Jan 03, 2022
Week 5-7 is Jan 03, 2022-Jan 18, 2022
Week 7-9 is Jan 18, 2022-Feb 03, 2022

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 Week 9-11 Feb 03, 2022-Feb 18, 2022
Week 11-13 is Feb 18, 2022-March 03, 2022
Week 13-15 is March 03, 2022- March 18, 2022
Week 15-17 is March 18, 2022-April 03, 2022
Week 17-19 is April 03, 2022- April 18, 2022
Week 19-21 is April 18, 2022-May 03, 2022

Figure 1 Gantt chart

1.11. Cost
The followings are costs related to development of the proposed system. Tangible costs
are costs that are used in the development of the project.

This includes: -

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  Software development cost

 Hardware development cost

 Other related costs.

These specifications are a minimum requirement:

Materials Type Amount in qty. Costs in ETB.

and tools
Laptop computer with 8 GB RAM 26,000 *2=52000
500 GB hard disk and 6.0 GHz CPU
Hardware speed in total.
32 GB or higher flash disk to 1 250
transfer files and to keep backups.
A4 paper for design and other 1 Dose 500
purpose
Printer for Proposal, questioners and - 500
documentation
Data cables 5 Meter 150
Pen, Pencil and other stationary - 500
Microsoft office 2010 - Free
Software XAMPP or WAMP Server - Free
MySQL and apache server - Free
Edrawmax - Free
Web browser - Free
Text Editors - Free
Programming languages - Free
Other Transportation during system - 500
analysis and data collection
Total 54400 ETB.
Table 3 Cost of material and tools

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References
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Electronics in Agriculture 19 (3), 233–248
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Kormentzas, G. (2012).Farm management systems and the Future Internet era. Computers
and Electronics in Agriculture, 89, 130– 144.
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[6]. Paiuc, Elena, “Three technologies to support farmer organizations during the COVID-19
crisis,” August 18, 2020.
[7]. Agricultural Technology Guide for Advancing Professional Farmer Organizations, AG-
Tech Focus Area: Ag-Tech that Enhances Supply Chain Management and Information
Communication for Extension, First Edition, AMEA, April 2020. Describes some
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service providers as well as promising smaller firms offering farmer management solutions.

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