CANBUS-enabled activity-based costing for leveraging farm management

The improvement of economic management in farms has become an important research topic recent decades as the most dominant feature current farm information systems (FMIS). Production cost statistics allow farmers to assess impact activities and compare historical data against previous practices or competitors’ activities. Therefore, availability reliable is utmost importance for FMIS, especially on agricultural machinery usage. Technical sheets, grey literature, international standards provide estimates operation costs, but they suffer from low accuracy because subjected high variability both environmental working conditions. Based these considerations, this work aims develop a novel methodology calculations field operations harnessing real-world CANBUS based activity-based costing (ABC) approach. was conducted 198-kW tractor equipped with logger several implements which Bluetooth beacons were installed automatically recognise operations. acquired processed identify daily jobs performed by observing machine position (e.g., field, farm, road) operating condition states moving, fieldwork, idling). ABC approach applied two steps: first, driver rates assessed define capital non-capital costs; then, costs each defined, correlating drivers recorded jobs. results show that fuel labour combined affect 63%–71% total per hectare tested implements. found be highly variable: biggest gap between higher lower values registered same implement 216.48 € ha−1. This could help make more thoughtful decisions about crop, land, management.