Farming With Computer

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 18

Farming With Computer

Farming with a computer will begin in Canterbury within a week for the first time in New Zealand. A joint effort by the department of accountancy at the University of Canterbury and the department of farm management at Lincoln College aims at improving the professional advice available to farmers.

The starting point was recognition that although the farmer looks to his farm advisory officer for technical or scientific guidance and to his accountant for help on tax and financial matters, much of the basic accounting and statistical data are needed for both types of problem. The research project, working with a sample of eight North Canterbury farms, involves the collection by a simple monthly questionnaire sheet of all important operating and financial activities on the farm. These sheets are passed by the farm management adviser to the operator in the department of accountancy commercial laboratory where they are coded and entered in a key-board sensimatic book-keeping machine. This machine simulanteously records selected details automatically on a punched-paper tape. On completion of the recording, this tape can be converted into punched cards and fed into the university’s computer. Using a locally-de-veloped programme, the computer will print, out detailed budget comparisons, prepare operating statistics for the farm advisers, and will even

produce draft annual accounts. The aim of the research team is to gain sufficient experience to be able to assess the economics of a large-scale application of these techniques. It is envisaged that this would involve collaboration between public accountants and the farm advisory service. The public accountant would carry out the work now being done on a trial basis in the university’s commercial laboratory and would continue his normal role of financial adviser and tax consultant. The computer work could be carried out in a commercial computer service bureau or even in a speciallyprovided computer centre established for the purpose. Professor A. S. Carrington and Messrs M. G. Wells and B. J. Clarke, are operating the pilot scheme in the accountancy department and Professor J. D. Stewart and Mr N. G. Gow in the farm management department. Although a great amount of previously - unrecorded detail will be collated, the participating farmers will not be involved in much bookwork. The simple form requires only that every operation and transaction be recorded —

every payment and its purpose, every item of income and its source, plus the descriptions of improvements applied (buildings to fertiliser) and the detailed results of cropping and stock raising. This will be typed on to an apparently conventional bookkeeping machine which will produce farm accounts in the conventional form with totals under broad headings. This same machine, however, armed with certain computer elements, will select detail relevant to computer farming. This it will punch on to a paper tape. Code of Holes

One code of holes seen represented the figure 211368. These denoted a particular part of the farm under action, the volume, cost, and description of a fertiliser purchase, and so on. With punched tape converted to punched cards and fed into the main computer, comparisons of operations can be made at any time while the records are still available for annual returns and review. These cards go into an information pool—in effect they are pigeon-holed and clearly tagged for use in a a great

variety of computer analyses. From these recommendations can be made for any necessary financial or farming change in operations. Budget checks can be made at any time. Thus the farmer has a running record of all aspects. The big computer will print accounts and also give narrative information in typed form. It can also renegue. Furnished with a programme specifying the extent of detail required, it churned out this response yesterday:— “This problem requires 49 sub-totals which is too darned many.”