Information technology and farm management: developments and perspectives

Our aspirations are pessimistic for the fast diffusion of complex and demanding information technology (IT) aids and decision support systems (DSSs) among farmers. This view arises from some results of the new institutional economics, recent results of empirical decision research, data from farmers applications of decision models, as well as experiences introducing farm-level DSSs by our own working group at Giessen. For some areas of decision making, one can only hope that the use of models heightens problem awareness by the user, thus providing additional insights into the usually complex decision space. If, however, farmers want to increase the economic efficiency of their production and marketing processes by decreasing waste and friction, then we must continue to develop and refine knowledge-based DSSs. Problem selection, however, should be driven by new results of empirical decision research. Because imperfect knowledge exists regarding the input¯output relations of agricultural production systems, as well as about the time- and space-variant uncontrollable input variables, close co-operation with the biological disciplines of agricultural science is needed. Multi-disciplinary research and end user orientation seem to be the key factors for further progress.