A Design of an Expert System for Intercropping Planning

In the past decades, the world’s food production was mostly practiced by a monoculture system, i.e., growing only a crop over an area. The monoculture causes damages (or changes) to the biological diversity, especially the soil fertility. The sustainable agriculture is an approach of managing crop ecology in order to maintain the biological diversity, productions and long-term human existence. One methodology of sustainable agriculture is called Intercropping, i.e., multiple crops are planted in the same area. In the intercropping planning, many cultivating factors, such as diseases, sale prices and cultivating areas, must be concerned because those factors are affected to ecological succession and total income of production. Producers have to face with the complication of many factors in order to obtain the optimal plan under the concept of sustainable agriculture. This paper proposes an expert system model for intercropping planning. The model analysis and design were exhaustively discussed in terms of ecology as an agricultural expert, benefit as an economist and system analysis and design as an information technologist. This model has been proved to provide the efficient and practical intercropping plans.