Use of WWW for agricultural advisory services: An example from crop production

The World Wide Web offers very promising perspectives for communication of up-to-date information which is tailored to fit the conditions of the particular user. The WWW makes it possible and practicable to collect up-to-date information from different relevant, independent sources and integrate it in the information presented for the user. This makes the WWW a potentially very valuable tool for agricultural advisory services. Within crop production a WWWbased information system, Pl@nteInfo, was launched in 1996. During the growing season the main information in Pl@nteInfo was risk calculations and field recordings of important crop diseases and pests, together with agricultural weather information. Based on the experience from the first season the system will be developed further in 1997 with additional facilities and with a closer tailoring of the information to the farm conditions, as submitted by the user. It will also be possible to develop relevant WWW-based information systems for advisory services within animal production, even though the need for up-to-date information is less distinct here.