Toward a Readiness Assessment Model for Technology Adoption in Small and Medium Agricultural Industry

Information technology is increasingly seen as a key enabler for many current and future challenges in agricultural companies. We suggest that information technology adoption in agricultural settings is not as straightforward as it might seem mainly due to the particular characteristics these contexts exhibit. This paper presents a preliminary version of a readiness assessment model for information and operation technology adoption in the Small and Medium Agricultural Industry. Using Domain-Driven Design, we identified core and generic domains such as water management, agricultural process and product certification, payroll management, and supplier management that are subject to potential information and operation technology adoption. The domains were identified from key use cases elicited from nine small and medium agricultural Chilean companies. Based on the identified domains and the literature review, we have built a first version of what will be a readiness assessment model to measure the readiness of small and medium-sized agricultural industries to adopt technologies. The model considers information and operation technologies in the agricultural industry. Validation of this proposed maturity model is underway, and some of these preliminary results are presented in this paper.