Wither Agricultural DSS?

Agricultural decision support systems (DSS) may be argued to have passed sequentially through phases of unbelief, euphoria and disappointment and to be passing into either a phase of maturity with realistic expectations of the technology or to abandonment. This paper proposes that agricultural DSS in their widest sense still have a significant role to play in shaping land use and management to meet society’s changing requirements. The paper draws its conclusions from the experiences of a team developing farming-systems models and from market research into the commercial potential of such models as DSS.