Information Technology Applications to Agricultural Value Chain for Protected Agriculture’s Producers

Abstract

This paper shows the importance of Information Technology (IT) as a consulting tool for medium and small scale of protected agriculture’s producers. The need to access Internet portals or mobile applications are established, because these technologies provide information about market prices, climate and plague alerts, research centers, financing, government support, input and output suppliers. services, customer requirements, success stories, etc., in this way they can make decisions that allow them to project their future productions and increase their level of competitiveness; to avoid as much as possible intermediaries and obtain better profits. In addition, investment in IT’s will help to producers, to gather complete, reliable, real-time information from various sources, joined with a good use of these, the uncertainty will decrease  in small-scale of protected agriculture’s producers. Several portals consulted on Internet we will present, as well as mobile applications and text message systems for cell phones developed in different countries by public and private institutions; they show information of some link in the agricultural value chain, of interest to producers. Unfortunately, this information we founded in different media and the consultants must navigate between these media, which involves investing time in the consultation; also they must have knowledge in the use of these technologies, so that you can create a complete vision to help you make decisions according to the information obtained.