A decision support system for farm planning using AgriSupport II

The farm planning problem is a critical aspect in the design of decision support systems (DSSs) for complex farm advising. Traditionally, the approaches to this problem have been very simple and unable to manage the complexity of the problem, which involves scheduling of field tasks, investment analysis, machinery selection, cost/benefit analysis, and other aspect of the agricultural production process. A new approach to this problem is presented for medium–large farms and integrated in a more general framework to build DSSs in agriculture. The system have been validated for the technicians of Albacete Provincial Technical Agricultural Institute (ITAP) and accepted as the core of future broad DSSs for their use. This is overall objective of the AgriSupport II project. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.