Based on what we learned from the farms cooperated with our Chinese partners, we set two survey objectives, one is the managers/advisors of farming cooperatives, they are the decision-makers who has the power to decide almost everything on the farms; and the other is the farmers who actually implement the decisions, but in the process of implementing the decisions, farmers may make decisions on actual operations based on their own experience and special circumstances. And they are the final users of the system.
The UoS has strong links with academics in China who are involved in the Agricultural industry. The main contact being Professor He Huang from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Huang is also Director of Smart Agriculture Research Centre and has been published 176 times.
Following discussions between the UK collaborators and China collaborators, it was agreed that the best option to gain the information required was to devise a questionnaire that could be distributed to and via Professor Huang’s agricultural contacts. The focus in distributing the questionnaires was to ensure that they were completed by ‘decision makers’.
In the end, two questionnaires were designed. The first one was primarily used to gauge the use of mobile technology and to try and understand how decisions relating to fertiliser use were made. This involved the completion of twelve multiple choice questions. The second questionnaire was split into two sections, the first section asked questions such as farm location, size, soil type, rainfall and tried to get an understanding of the level of agronomic knowledge. The second part was focussed on specific crop details. Both sections of the second questionnaire used mainly multiple choice questions.