Introducting a decision support system to agriculturally developing countries: An example from North China

A decision support system (DSS) should be relatively easy to introduce in an agriculturally developed country that has a highly trained technical staff and a well developed agricultural infrastructure. In agriculturally developing countries, these conditions may not exist. Compounding the difficulty may be problems associated with agricultural development, such as overstocking of grazing lands, land use problems, a large and rapidly expanding population, and changes in socio-cultural patterns. Under these conditions, introducing a DSS with a computerized format might appear to be an insurmountable task. However, it is this development situation that usually has the most immediate need and that could potentially benefit most from the resources DSS.