# ICT in Rural Areas from the Perspective of Dairy Farming: A Systematic Review
## 1 Introduction  
The Internet has become an essential tool for communication, education, entertainment, shopping, and many other applications. In fact, nowadays the access to cyberspace is not a luxury any longer but a necessity [1]. This has fostered what is known as the \"Fourth Industrial Revolution\" or \"Industry 4.0,\" propelled by the appearance and progressive maturity of the ICT applied to industrial processes and products [2]. This revolution has brought important progress and social and economic benefits but also has led to a new type of inequality often known as the \"digital divide\" [3, 4], tries to put an end to this situation through the promotion of the rapid and ultra-rapid online access for everybody, as well as carrying out strategies which lead to digital literacy, skills, and inclusion [5]. Nowadays, this tendency to digitize and automate processes with tools such as Smart Manufacturing, Smart Production, or Industrial Internet [6] makes it essential that everybody knows how to use the ICT effectively, both for their economic benefit and for their life quality [7]. In the case of the production of foodstuff, the current concern related to global alternative security, climate change, animal welfare, biodiversity, and natural resources disposal highlights the necessity of sustainable development of agriculture, which is only possiblewith the support of the ICT [8]. Within this field, it is expected that the new technologies fill the gaps, complement and improve the rural services and reduce the rural inhabitants' isolation, creating cohesion and opportunities [9; 10], thus that they are able to work remotely and interact both with their local and global communities in different ways [11]. To authors such as [12; 13], the future of livestock goes together with sustainability. It is precisely here where digitalization becomes a key aspect since apart from meaning an improvement in the production of farms, it can facilitate the exchange of experiences between the farmers themselves, experts, and other interested parties. In the last years, dairy farms have been subjected to an increment of the demands in terms of quality, together with a reduction in the price of their product, which meant the necessity to increase the efficiency of the production. It is at this point where the adoption of the \"Precision Agriculture\" comes into play, with the use of \"Internet of Things\" or \"Big Data Analytics\" [14; 15; 16; 17; 18]. It is also important to take into account the current state of the art of the dairy industry, where two main standpoints can be distinguished: The Supply Food Chain (SFSC), where there is a very direct approach to the client [19; 20; 21; 22] or the great organized distributions [23; 24; 25]. Regarding the use of ICT in these terms, it is worth mentioning studies conducted by [20] in Baja California (Mexico) of manufacturing companies based on SFSC, where they observed eight main factors for making decisions with the use of new technologies: Facilitation of information, operation management, production control, visibility among partners within the supply chain, operation management in the manufacturing lines, flexibilization, low costs, and short cycles with clients. In addition, [21] along this line, in their studies in Spain of agroecological cooperatives show the importance of the ICT in the relational web of the different agents involved in the supply chain. In large supply chains, according to [23], information and communication technologies and the Internet of Things allow to efficiently carry out the traceability through the whole supply chain of agricultural products eliminating the problems of security, quality, and defense of agricultural products, since they give precise and real-time information, information which is transparent and reliable from the field to the plate. The present paper focuses precisely on the last point: Dairy livestock in the field of the ICT.