Locating agricultural decision support systems in the troubled past and socio-technical complexity of ‘models for management’

Although not conspicuous in its literature, agricultural modelling and its applications have inherited much from the field of operational (operations) research. In the late 1940s, techniques for mathematically simulating processes came into agricultural science directly from industry. The decision support system (DSS) concept followed almost 40 years later. It seems that the large differences between farm production and its management and industrial production and its management account for the failure of agricultural systems scientists to be more attentive students of the experiences in this parent field. In hindsight, the penalty of this is greatest in the matter of the problematic socio-technical relationship between scientific models built to guide practice and actual practice. As a socio-technical innovation, the agricultural DSS has much more in common with DSSs in business and industry than might be expected judging by the domain knowledge content. One implication is that the crisis in the parent field concerning the ‘problem of implementation’ could have served as a cautionary tale for agriculture. Although this opportunity was missed, it is not too late to tap problem-structuring and problem-solving insights from operations research/management science to aid our thinking about our own ‘problem of implementation’. This paper attempts this in constructing a framework for thinking about subsequent papers in this Special Issue.