Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Background of the Organization ....................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Statement of the problem ........................................................................................................................ 2

1.3 Project Objectives ................................................................................................................................... 3

1.3.1 General objective ............................................................................................................................. 3

1.3.2 Specific objectives ........................................................................................................................... 3

1.4 Functional and non-functional requirement ............................................................................................ 3

1.4.1 functional requirement ..................................................................................................................... 3

1.4.1 non-functional requirement .............................................................................................................. 4

1.5 Feasibility Analysis ................................................................................................................................. 4

1.5. 1 Operational Feasibility .................................................................................................................... 4

1.5.2 Technical Feasibility ........................................................................................................................ 5

1.5.3 Economic feasibility ........................................................................................................................ 5

1.5.4 Behavioral/Political Feasibility ........................................................................................................ 5

1.5.5 Schedule Feasibility ......................................................................................................................... 6

1.6 Scope of the project ................................................................................................................................ 6

1.7 Limitation of the project ......................................................................................................................... 7

1.8 Significance of the project ...................................................................................................................... 7

1.9 Target beneficiaries of the system .......................................................................................................... 8

1.10 Methodology for the project ............................................................................................................. 8

1.10.1 Data gathering methodology .......................................................................................................... 8

1.10.2 Data analysis methodology ....................................................................................................... 9

1.10.3 Implementation Methodology ........................................................................................................ 9

1.11 Budget ................................................................................................................................................. 10

Reference ...................................................................................................................................................... ii

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1 Introduction
The integration of Information Technology (IT) into farming industries has lagged in
comparison to other sectors of the economy; there has been a slow adoption rate to utilizing the
internet and integrating IT into agricultures. Today IT plays a vital role for decision making in
farming industries; Along with improving the efficiency of farmer’s productivity in agriculture
and various activities; the contribution of IT in improving life of farmers by providing timely data
for decision making, is remarkable. We all know that agriculture is an important and crucial sector
hence its proper functioning is vital for human survival. However, in recent years farmers have
proved they do have the confidence to leave the old ways behind and grab the technology. The
farm assistant system used to broaden variety and availability of specialist farming technologies
has allowed for increased efficiency in productivity areas; and increasing adoption of existing
technologies such as which allows more efficient management of information and lower
transaction costs.

The proposed system can overcome the problem in manual system. Countries like Ethiopia, who
focused on cultivating the land; the application of this system into business processes is not only
positively affects the farmers themselves but the economy as a whole.

1.1 Background of the Organization

In Ethiopia agriculture has played a central role in overcoming food security. Now
Ethiopia has ample land and human resources with large number of farmers earning their
livelihoods through cultivating the land; And the country has chosen the Agricultural Led-
Industrial Economy (ADLI) that is advantageous for the majority of farmers in the country. but
from Lage land they harvest little products because farmers have no correlation with agriculture
sectors, and not easily accesses information that used to increase their productivity.
Now a day Agriculture in Ethiopia is trying to shifting to huge, modern and scientific ways leaning
on technological developments. Ethiopia contains around nine (9) region; SNNPR one region that
works on cultivating lands. Gurage zone one zone in SNNPR and people live in this zone are works
on cultivating lands; In this zone there are no farm assistant web-based system. In previous system,
up to present system a framer not have any web based assistant system and they communicate with

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agricultural experts by using paper and direct communications with each other’s. So, this project
is giving a contribution to the farmers through SMS that are useful in hiring and announcing of
different information for farmer and others that interreacting with it

1.2 Statement of the problem

The Gurage zone Agro office in the current situation it uses manual system for assisting farmers;
so, it’s difficult to know the overall information of farming materials like fertilizer, pesticide, and
announcing of different information for farmer and others that interreacting with it. It’s also
difficult to communicate with woreda agriculture office, kebele office, send new information direct
to farmers, and receive feedback from farmers. The manual system is time consuming and boring
for sharing information to farmers. It also makes the system more complex.
farmers also facing a lot of problems with the existing system; such as follows: -

 Lack of communication between farmers, agricultural sectors both at zone and

woreda office.
 Prone to error (information of one office may recorded in different places with
different information).
 Farmers have no easily accesses information about materials like fertilizers and
pesticides that used for increasing they production and productivity.
 There is no system which consist of information which help the farmers in order
to give awareness regarding farming technologies and current weather condition
of their local areas.
 existing system do not contain querying system i.e. If the farmers have any queries
regarding the farming techniques, they cannot post them into the system and their
doubts remain unanswered.
 Farmers not have information about price of material they used like fertilizer,
pesticide and others related materials used for increasing productivity of crops.
 Not accurate.
 It consumes more time and effort for doing the day to day activities.
 Since processes are being manually implemented, they need much man power.

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  The communication from Zone to Woreda office by letters so it consumes time

1.3 Project Objectives

1.3.1 General objective

The main objective of this project is to develop a web-based system that can minimize the problems
associated with farm assistant system in Gurage zone.

1.3.2 Specific objectives

 study existing system
 Perform requirement analysis.
 Design the architecture for the proposed system.
 Create database
 To create paperless environment.
 Designing user interface.
 To implementing the system.
 To testing the system

1.4 Functional and non-functional requirement

The function requirement is the functionality that the system can be done.

1.4.1 functional requirement

The functionality of this system can be the zone office register woredas, target annual plan and
post it, post news and events, send new information and events to farmers through SMS, receive
feedback from woreda agriculture office, kebele office, and farmers, response in emergency,
generate report on annual plan and post information about distribution of seed, fertilizer and
pesticide for specific woreda office, View report send from woreda and give feedback, and also
the Woreda office can be register kebele, view annual plan posted by zone office and depending
on it target their annual plan, post news and information about distribution seed, pesticides and
fertilizer, receive news and events posted by zone office and kebele office and give feedback,
generate report and post. Kebele office register farmers, post complaints raised from farmers to

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zone and woreda office, post information about distribution of materials like fertilizers and
pesticides, and generate reports on annual collected crop and post.

Farmers can View information send from zone office, woreda office also send feedback, View
about current whether condition of their local area.

1.4.1 non-functional requirement

Non-functional requirements are often called qualities of a system.

Performance: - The system can assume to support more than 100 concurrent requests at once. To
achieve efficiency this system, use mysql server database, this is efficient in query and processing

Available: - The system should be available 90% of the time, because of their power fluctuations
10% the system may be down.

Security and Access permissions: - User validation will be done during login to ensure that the
user is valid and that the user only has access to his/her permitted information.

Backup and Recovery: -The proposed system can be damaged or fail if there is virus attack and
continuous power disconnection from the source station and the data can be lost at that time. The
system should be holding a backup of the data by using different storage devices like Hard disk,
CD, DVD Flash. The backup can be performing in a week at middle night 6:00 pm because of no
works perform at this time.

Scalability: - generally refers to the ability to increase the number of users or application associated
with the services

1.5 Feasibility Analysis

1.5. 1 Operational Feasibility

We perform the activity firstly by understanding of main problem manual system have and we
taught changing this manual system to somehow an automating manner is the best thing and
depending on this, the project result is operational feasible. The system to be developed will
provide accurate, active, secured service and decreases labor of workers. and also, it is platform
independent i.e. it run’s in all operating system.

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 1.5.2 Technical Feasibility
The proposed system can be technically feasible because it doesn’t require any technical expert
and also, we would develop this system by familiar programming language like, HTML, PHP,
JavaScript’s, CSS and database MYSQL language. This proposed system can generate outputs in
a given time, response time is minimum, easy to communicate and generally it satisfies the end-
user’s requirement.

1.5.3 Economic feasibility

One of the main influences to the new system is to minimize cost that will be needed to generate
accurate information. In the new system the users need to have web-based system that they directly
read the information needed at right time. This leads to a more accurate data that will be reported
from zone, woreda, and kebele office. It’s free so no need to use any cost.

Intangible benefit: -

 Moral satisfaction
 Work initiation
 Better decision making
 Better service to the farmers

Tangible benefit: -

 Cost reduction because the system requires very less cost when compared with the existing
one.
 Increase farmers productivity
 Proper use of time and resource
 Increase country economy.

1.5.4 Behavioral/Political Feasibility

The proposed system is behaviorally feasible and cannot cause any harm in the
environment. The project would be beneficial because it satisfies the farmers need. The
system will be developed to be user friendly, and improves the working environment

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1.5.5 Schedule Feasibility
The time given for this project is around seven months. First three months for design and
the next four-month are for implementation and test of the designed. Based on the
department schedule we also have developed our own schedule to finish the project.
Table 1. time schedule for system development

Activity Months
Nov 2018 Dec 2018 January Feb 2019- April May 2019
2019 May 2019 2019
1.system 
development
proposal
2.system 
analysis
3.system design 

4.system  
implementation
5.Testing the  
system
6.Documentation 
and project
submission

1.6 Scope of the project

The scope of this project is to design and implement farm assistant system for Gurage zone
agricultural office to address systemic bottlenecks in the crop farming sectors by supporting and
enhancing the capability of the farmers. The main scope of our system is concerned on transferring
information about crop production between farmers, crop farming sectors. The proposed system
covers the following main tasks:

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  Allow zone, woreda and kebele office to comment each other, and post different
information.
 Allow farmers to accesses information through SMS messages by using Amharic
languages anywhere.
 Provide some basic information about the materials used to increase farmers production
and productivity.
 Support online registration for new users.
 Administrator control the system.

1.7 Limitation of the project

The project we developing has limitation on fields like:

 Our system is limited only on information distribution and managing user information.
 Our system does not include modules that farmers online sale their production and buy
different materials like fertilizer and pesticide online (online transaction).
 Our system only limited to crop farming sectors not include other agriculture sectors.

1.8 Significance of the project

After this project is finished and properly used it gives great benefits to farmers, crop farming
sectors at zone, woreda, and kebele office and also governments. Some of the significant that the
team has identified are listed out as follows:

 Reduce manual process and cost to assist farmers.

 Control the user information from risk.
 Reduce time to access correct information or data.
 Improving efficiency, control and security of system.
 Fasten and facilitate the strategy of increasing productivity.
 Improve farmers moral by giving good information that used to increase their production.

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1.9 Target beneficiaries of the system
There are different bodies that will be benefited from this system. The main beneficiaries of this
system include:

 Gurage zone Agro office and crop farming sectors that assist farmers: - in manual
system there is loss of materials like, fertilizer, pesticide, paper, pen which is cost
and more manpower, the system reduces incorrect information.
 Farmers: - by providing fast access to the information they need by reducing time
like going to different offices.
 Developers of the project: -it increases our knowledge and we get moral
satisfaction from the project we developed.
 Country: - indirectly benefit which means when farmers increase their production
and change their life country can be develop.

1.10 Methodology for the project

1.10.1 Data gathering methodology

For the collection of data: Observation, Interview and Document analysis was used.
 Observation: - We observe that people raise complaints because there is no efficient information
on farming product material.
 Interview: - We interviewed the Gurage zone agriculture office employees personally and
through phone calls for follow up questions and clarifications regarding their present
system. Users need enough information regarding farming materials to cultivate particular
amount of crops. Most people in the region give complaints because they do not receive
enough information on materials.
 Document Analysis: - We used this method to know all about the staff mission, vision, function
and overall of their work in short and brief.
 Collecting information from different references like, web sites
 By discussing and analyzing the problems with project team.

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 1.10.2 Data analysis methodology
The data analysis model applied in this project is an object-oriented approach. For designing
purposes an object-oriented designing was applied in this project. Since it is easy to maintain if
any error is occurred. The system development model was used in this project is Iterative
Enhancement Model for the reasons that Iterative Enhancement Model because it’s Easier to test,
Provide Feedback

1.10.3 Implementation Methodology

Different hardware and software are used to develop our project.

hardware

 Computer: Highest processor speed and latest CPU,4GB RAM, Hard disc 250 GB
 Network cable: -was used to get the internet access by connecting internet line from
internet switch to computer for further reading and search of information from internet.
 Flash Disk and CD: -used for the movement of data from one machine to another. We
used both CD and flash disk when we move our data from one machine to another.

Software

 Front end software

 Microsoft office word: -It is very useful because it takes less time to write
and format the text, communicative effectively smart diagram and chart
tools, quickly assemble document. By looking its useful properties, we
used Microsoft office word to type our project work to get all the above the
benefits of it.
 Power point: - was used to present the document in forms that can be
understood easily. We also used it to present our presentation in short and
brief way.
 Back end software
 MYSQL: - this software was used to create the database of the project.
NOTEPAD++, subline: - subline is important to write our html code and
PHP codes.

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  JavaScript: - JavaScript is very interesting language used to validate data
and develop different messages. We used to validate our data which we used
in html code.
 VISO, Edraw max: To develop the UML diagrams our project team used
this software

1.11 Budget
For the successful accomplishment of the project, the costs associated with each item
required have been estimated. This will help us to limit the constraints related to cost while
the project is conducted. From the beginning up to the end of this project we planned the
following cost list.

Table 1.1 budget

No Item quantity Price per item Total price

1 Computers 1 1200 1200

laptop/desktop
2 Paper 300 25 cent 75
3 CD and Flash Disk 3 200 birr 300
4 Pen 5 5 birr 25
5 Print 150 2 birr 300
6 Binding 2 10 birr 20
7 transport 2 20 birr 40
8 Network cable 1 100 100

Total 12860 birr

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Reference
1. https://www.farmafrica.org/ethiopia/ethiopia
2. https://infomineo.com/agriculture-in-ethiopia
3. Information gathered from Gurage agriculture office

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CHAPTER TWO

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE EXISTING SYSTEM

2.1 Introduction of Existing System

A detailed study of the process has been made by techniques like interviews, document analysis,
and observation. also, we have analyzed the operations of the existing system. The operations of
existing system are done in hierarchy. Which means the work is divided in levels: -

 Zone Level
 Woreda Level
 Kebele level

Zone Level: this level has little difference with Woreda level. The difference is the inputs for the
Woreda are kebele’s whereas the inputs for zone level are Woreda. What they do in zone level is,
they generate annual plan as zone level, they put the sum total of the demands of all Woreda, they
receive report from woreda, send farm extension to different kebele for collecting information
related to farm from farm and give advices, and report can send to regional office and also give a
correction if there is any. In giving correction they analyze the production GDP of the previous
year of each Woreda. Then they put the production GDP to the zone and submit it to the regional
office.

The drawback of this system can be visualized as:

 Time drawback and

 Economical drawback.
 Correct information drawback

Time: In the existing system as discussed above there are different levels that are connected
manually, for this particular reason sharing of information is time consuming.
Economical: The capital invested to collect the data is of a huge amount. The first thing done in
order to collect the data is printing the form paper. This requires a lot of papers, so it requires a
great deal of money. In addition to that the government should have to pay money for the people
involved in the collection of the details from the farmers. The capital for transportation must also
be taken into consideration. Also, some time data or information can be collected by using phone,
this also affecting the economies.

Economical drawbacks after distributing: the drawbacks we see above lead to under estimation of
demands, so that the agro office will not be able to get the amount of materials or resources they
need.

This leads to the decrease in the Production GDP of the country. On the other hand, it results in
the under success of the goal or the plan

Correct information drawback: the information can not reach at right time to right place, because
information can be shared manually by preparing hard copy which can be easily lost and damaged.

In Woreda Level: this level can generate annual plan, receive report from the kebeles, give
correction on report received from kebele. They also collect the total sum of the demands of all
the kebeles. In this level there is a form paper. In this form paper they put the total of the demands
of all kebeles. In addition to this they also put the production GDP of last year; this is useful for
estimating the demand of the coming year. Once finished they make copies of it and submit to next
level, i.e. zone level.

In kebele level: they also generate annual plan, different form can be prepared which used for
collecting data from farmers and organized this data and send report weekly to woreda, they also
collect the total sum of the demands of all farmers with in the specific kebele, and report to woreda.

2.1 Users of Existing System

In Existing systems there are different users that use manual operation. The following users are
listed below:

Agricultural data collection office worker (ADCOW): who is working agricultural data collection
office at different levels and have limited privilege, which is determined by the administrator
Administrator: is the one who is working on agriculture office as a manager. He/she has the power
to control other staffs in that office

Cooperation office (hibrat sera office): who is working on distributing different materials for
farmers at different levels.

2.1 Major Functions of the Existing System

Major functions/Activities in the Existing System like Inputs, Processes & Output.

Input: The office takes the following components as an input to provide the information within
the office.

 Agro office name

 Location
 Title of work want to operate
 Office manager name

Processes: The agricultural office performs the following operations while proving
information to the farmers.

 Verifying the office name.

 Verify the office location.
 Manage the time for each information

Output: After taking the above inputs and processing them the office provides the following
results or out puts.

 Share full information between the office

 Will able to generate reports for the allocation or estimation of farming needs such as
materials like fertilizer and pesticide.
2.4 Forms and Other Documents of the Existing Systems

Currently, Zone office uses different forms and reports to distribute farming materials and to
manipulate different records associated with different activities. From those forms, some are
Woreda’s registration form. woreda office also uses different forms to distribute farming materials
and to manipulate different records associated with different activities. From those forms, some
are kebele registration form, form prepared by cooperative office (hibrat sera office) for
distributing different materials like fertilizer and pesticide to kebele office.

2.5 Drawbacks of the Existing System

The present system of Zone Office is prone to various problems. These problems can be seen from
the following perspectives like performance, information, economic, control, efficiency and
services given by the existing system to the office, by using the PIECES framework as follows

2.5.1 Performance

 The system is designed to be accessed by different offices with different needs of

information, it is not capable of handling and processing their information quickly which
means luck of throughput. The current system’s performance of distributing information is
weak. This is due to the following reasons, the time required from initiation to completion
of a particular task is relatively high. For example, when the Woreda office want to get
information about crop production, he may go to the Zone office or may sends letters to
Zone for they question and the Zone office will respond to him according to the available
data they have and the time they could spent for every inquiry. The response time will
depend how fast they will respond for every inquiry and the availability of data they have
in their records. Since it is a manual operation, long waiting time is expected.

2.5.2 Information

The main input in the current system are the data gathered by the kebele office from the farmer,
and this data will be the basis for the zone or woreda office to make estimation on the materials
needed by particular woreda or kebele office. but the problem is the gathered data by kebele office
can be shared to zone and woreda office manually which can be decrease the accuracy and quality
of the data and data cannot reach the right office at right time. The following are information
relating problems
Input:

 Data is not captured

 Data is not captured in time to be useful
 Data is not accurately captured – contains errors
 Data is difficult to capture
 Data us captured redundantly – same data is captured more than once

Outputs:

 Lack of any information

 Lack of necessary information
 Lack of relevant information
 Information that is not in a useful format
 Information that is not accurate
 Information that is difficult to produce
 Information that is not timely to its subsequent use

Stored Data:

 Data is stored redundantly in multiple files

 Stored data is not accurate
 Data is not secure from accident
 Data is not well organized
 Data is not flexible – not easy to meet new information needs from stored data
 Data is not accessible

2.5.3 Economical

The Zone Office performs all of its tasks manually which requires much of the work to be done
by manpower, and requires huge amount of papers for the manual storage of data on papers, which
lead the manual system to spend much money for human resource and for purchasing papers and
other materials.

2.5.4 Controlling

Since all the records associated with the manual system are recorded and stored manually the
security that the system provides for the privacy of this records is not reliable. The system cannot
provide sufficient protection for access and manipulation of the records associated with the system.
this can raise because of the following reason:

 Input data is not adequately edited

 Crimes (e.g. fraud, embezzlement) are (or can be) committed
against the data
 Ethics are breached on data or information – refers to data or
information getting to unauthorized people
 Redundantly stored data is inconsistent in different files
 Data privacy regulations or guidelines are being (or can be) violated
 Processing errors are occurring
 Decision- making errors are occurring

2.5.5 Efficiency

As we mentioned earlier, the Zone Office system encountered many problems such as:
unnecessary information redundancy, consumption of cost and time and needs more labor to assist
the farmers. Hence, the existing manual system requires improve to meet its optimum efficiency.

2.6 Business Rules of the Existing System

3 This part specifies and gives understanding of activities which are being done in the existing
system in terms of business rule.
BR1: Only zone office can modify zone information
BR2: Each office should have unique identification number to be identified.
 BR3: the zone office manager has a power to control overall working woreda and kebele
office
BR4: information gathered at different level can be reported to its higher level which means
from kebele office to woreda office and from woreda office to zone office at each ends of
weeks.
BR5: only zone office has power to add/register new woreda, and new kebele should
registered by woreda office to the system.

CHAPTER THREE
3.1 PROPOSED SYSTEM
The proposed system is a new system that is a web based agricultural information sharing system.
The system provides reduces the manual work; reduce time and resource needed in the existing
system, and the capital that will be invested.

3.2 Requirements of the Proposed System

The following are functional and Nonfunctional requirements of the proposed new system that a
group member have identified are listed below.

3.2.1 Functional requirements

The function requirement is the functionality that the system can be done. The functionality of web
base monitoring can be the zone, Woreda, and kebele office generate report, post news and events,
response in emergency, target annual plan, give information about production and productivity,
distribution seed and fertilizer, view annual crop production, and also send feedback, and send
report and also Kebele office register farmers, post complaints raised from farmers to zone and
woreda office, generate reports on annual collected crop and post. Farmers can View information
send from zone office, woreda office also send feedback, and View about current whether
condition of their local area through SMS.

Input related requirements:

 The system should have user name and password

 The system can validate and authenticate the users’ username and password
  The system should validate the data entry.

Output related requirements:

 The system can allow Zone Office to update necessary offices’ information to the system.
 The system allows the Woreda and kebele office can be view different type information,
new and events, send feedback, view solution, send crop production, see emergency
response and send report.
 The system allows zone office to generate report, emergence response, update information,
view feedback, view crop production, post new and events, response solution.
 The system allows admin to view the user account.

Storage Related Requirements:

 The system will store all the different information of the Zone office, Woreda office, and
kebele office.
 The system stores all user detail information

3.2.2 Non-Functional requirements

Performance: - The system can assume to support more than 100 concurrent requests at once. To
achieve efficiency this system, use mysql server database, this is efficient in query and processing

Available: - The system should be available 90% of the time, because of their power fluctuations
10% the system may be down.

Security and Access permissions: - User validation will be done during login to ensure that the
user is valid and that the user only has access to his/her permitted information. We use MD5
encryption algorithm which is more secured.

Backup and Recovery: -The proposed system can be damaged or fail if there is virus attack and
continuous power disconnection from the source station and the data can be lost at that time. The
system should be holding a backup of the data by using different storage devices like Hard disk,
CD, DVD Flash. The backup can be performing in a week at middle night 6:00 pm because of no
works perform at this time.

Scalability: - the system has the ability to increase the number of users or application associated
with the services

Usability: - The system is easy to learn and operate. The User interface for this system will be
simple and clear.

 Since the system has a GUI it is easy for users even with a little idea on how to use it.
 People easily interact with the system from outside using the internet since it is web based.

Reliability: - The data or information, which is retrieved from the system, is accurate, in deserved
time.

Supportability: - The system can be easily transferred from one environment to another; The
system can be changed if we want to deal with new idea or technology. And the system will be
accompanied with a proper documentation it will be easily maintainable.

Interface: - The system provides

 An interface that is easy to use.

 interaction of users with system should be through GUI
 The form should be user friendly, it should not be implicated and does not need any
extensive training
 This application uses English and Amharic to interact with the users.

Implementation: - The system is developed for Gurage zone agriculture office. Implementation
requirements; network (connection), devices (laptop, server, cable, desktop).

Portability: -The system is machine independent and software system independent so it can be
moved to different target platforms.
Documentation: –The system contains the required documents needed to implement the project.
Physical Environment: - the system could deploy to Gurage zone for agriculture office at zone
level.