AGFADOPT: A decision support system for agroforestry project planning and implementation

This paper describes AGFADOPT, a rule-based decision support system (DSS) designed to model some of the social and economic factors that influence small farmer adoption of tree-based innovations. The system is designed to help technically trained personnel incorporate social and economic criteria into project planning and implementation. To create AGFADOPT, information obtained from the literature was used to develop a set of general rules that simulate farmer decision making regarding the adoption of two tree-based technologies: fruit tree orchards and contour hedgerows. These rules were combined in the expert system using a yes/no decision-tree framework. Preliminary verification of the system prototype using data from the Dominican Republic and evaluation of the system by potential users suggest that it is logically consistent, reasonably accurate (83% for tree orchard; 68% for contour hedgerows), and potentially useful.