FARMSYS - A WHOLE-FARM MACHINERY MANAGEMENT DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

FARMSYS-a whole-farm machinery management decision support system-was developed in PROLOG (PROgramming in LOGic) using object-oriented data structures. It utilizes weather data, machinery capacities, labor availability, and information on permissible and prioritized operators, tractors, and implements for evaluating the operational behavior of a farm system. It also estimates crop production, gross revenue, and net profit for individual fields and for the whole farm. FARMSYS was evaluated and critiqued by a team of agricultural systems experts. They considered FARMSYS qualified as a decision-aid tool. They found its structure flexible to incorporate location-specific knowledge. When verified for its operational capabilities using real farm data, FARMSYS identified a tractor, an operator and seven implements that were under-utilized and could be withdrawn from the test farm without significantly affecting the timeliness of a majority of the field operations. The basic structure of FARMSYS is easily adaptable for other types of agricultural and industrial applications.