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Because decision-aids are often developed to improve the capture, transfer (in a learning
sense), and use of agricultural knowledge, the search for and development of successful
decision-aids needs to begin with a thorough knowledge of agriculture. It might be yet more
appropriate to search for the agricultural knowledge that is critical for providing food
security and well-being. One of the hypotheses of the decision-aids effort described herein
was that it was possible to capture, transfer (in a learning sense), and use this knowledge
more directly---in contrast to simply writing chapters, books, and articles on the knowledge
which must then be read and assimilated before the knowledge could be used.
3. Agricultural knowledge
Agricultural knowledge, that is the combined experience of how to grow and produce food,
fiber, and bioproducts while securing a livelihood from the land, is extremely complex,
comprised of multiple disciplines, multiple persons, with multiple levels of abstraction.
Producer decisions range from considering the details of how a plant needs protection from
pests and diseases, to planning commodity trading and marketing---all sometimes in a
matter of minutes. Other producers' worries range from which variety of food crop to plant,
to which field to plant first, to issues of food availability and alternative sources of income
should food production fail. With such complexity, uncertainty, and variation over time, it
is not surprising that agriculture as an enterprise is considered highly risky. White (personal
communication, Cornell University, 2011) clusters the modern agricultural risks into 5
groups (1) Production risk, 2) Marketing/Price Risks, 3) Financial Risk, 4) Legal and
Environmental Risk, 5) Human Resource Risks. Of those risks the primary one to be
considered in this chapter is production risk. Production risk or productivity has been
identified as an agroecosystem property by Conway (1986). He groups the major properties
of agroecosystems thusly: 1) Productivity, 2) Stability, and 3) Resilience. Rambo and Sajise
(1984) have expanded the number of properties to include those related to the human
community associated with the agro-ecosystem (Table 1).
Property
Description
Productivity
The agroecosystem's output of goods and services.
Stability
The degree to which productivity remains constant.
Sustainability (now
Resilience)
The ability of a system to maintain its productivity when subjected
to stress and shock.
Equitability
A measure of how evenly the products of the agroecosystem are
distributed among its human beneficiaries.
Autonomy
A measure of the extent to which a system's survival is dependent
on other systems outside its control.
Solidarity
The ability of a social system (i.e. community) to make and
implement decisions about collective behavior.
Diversity (Rambo,
1989)
Measure of the number of different kinds/types of components.
Usually providing a greater range of options for change when
necessary.
The ability of the system to respond to change in its environment
to ensure continuing survival.
An example analysis of several agricultural systems from this perspective is given in (Yost et al., 1997).
Table 1. Agroecosystem properties. (Conway, 1987, Marten and Rambo, 1988).
Adaptability
(Rambo, 1989)
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