CROFTERS who want to know when to plant their crops will soon be able to
use the Internet to tap into all the advice they need. The European Union has
agreed to fund a project at Edinburgh University designed to bring information
technology to farmers in remote areas. 鈥淭he idea is to design a system which
will be able to reach out across the Net to fetch information and which will
be easy to use,鈥� says the project鈥檚 manager Robert Inder.
The project 鈥� Sustainable Telematics for Environmental Management 鈥�
presents huge technical challenges. At present, information is scattered
across many databases. Academics regularly cope with these problems, says
Inder. 鈥淏ut there鈥檚 a real gap between something that works on a research
scale and something that works efficiently and consistently on a farmer鈥檚
desk,鈥� he says.