Modeling Management Operations in Agricultural Production Simulators

At the core of farm management lies the issue of work organization that concerns the configuration of activities in space and time, the material requirements for their execution (resources, sensors), and the anticipated means to adapt or react to contingencies. At a more micro level work organization has also to deal with operational aspects: the conditions and manner in which one or more people use purposefully information and tools in order to fulfill the specific objective attached to a primitive operation. This paper argues in favor of an investigation approach of farm management based on a simulation model of the decision maker's behavior, the course of implementing operations and the interaction of the above processes with the biophysical ones and external events linked, in particular, to climatic factors. Simulation of the management process can be of great help in conceiving new production systems or in improving their efficiency, robustness and acceptability. The paper outlines the specific modeling needs when the decision-making behavior and work process play a central role in the intended study. It proposes a conceptualization of the structure and behavior of the management related aspects of a an agricultural production system.