2018 ASHS Annual Conference

The Farmer's Bookshelf information system was created in 1987 on a Macintosh computer using the application software HyperCard. Initially covering fruit crops in Hawaii, it was later expanded to other crops and cost of analysis spreadsheets. A version was created to run on PC (IBM compatible) computers using the application software Spinnaker PLUS. The Farmer's Bookshelf was later modified to run on the World Wide Web. Recently, an extension agent in Hawaii expressed interest in updating the Farmer's Bookshelf. It was decided that the updating and management of this information system would be taken over by this agent and another extension agent. We then saw the potential for creating another version of the Farmer's Bookshelf that went beyond just crops. The iFarmer's Bookshelf is a mobile version of the Farmer's Bookshelf. Rather than crops, it covers a diverse range of topics related to high technology in agriculture. We used Google Sites to develop the iFarmer's Bookshelf. Google Sites was chosen because the iFarmer's Bookshelf could be stored on the University of Hawaii server and the ease of having the iFarmer's Bookshelf formatted especially for use on mobile devices. Unlike the original Farmer's Bookshelf, which covered various crops, the iFarmer's Bookshelf covers various topics related to high technology in agriculture. These topics were chosen from the latest technological fields in agriculture. The topics and pages include What's New Today, Things to Do, Innovative Agriculture, High Technology, Hydroponics, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Precision Agriculture, Space Farming, Robotics, Nanotechnology, Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and Science Conferences. RSS feeds and news aggregators were used to find and retrieve cutting-edge information. In conclusion, the iFarmer's Bookshelf goes beyond the original Farmer's Bookshelf by keeping users up-to-date with innovative high technology in the ever-changing fields of agriculture.