Systems Engineering Principles and Applications for the Design of a Whole‐Farm Information System

The integration of agricultural research results into information management and information transfer technologies can aid agricultural practitioners and farm managers in understanding complex interactions among farming systems components, and in improving whole-farm resource management. Systems approaches discussed in agricultural literature can be classified as being science-driven or technology-driven. Although specific objectives associated with these approaches may be fundamentally different, they share many similar principles. Our main objectives are to identify the common principles of several different systems design and development approaches, and to discuss how we applied these principles to develop the farm management information system entitled Farmbook [...]