Sustainability as a governing principle in the use of agricultural decision support systems: The case of CropSAT

Precision agriculture (PA) is an important part of sustainable intensification, where information and communications technology (ICT) and other technologies are necessary but not sufficient for sustainable farming systems. Many agricultural decision support systems (AgriDSS) have been developed to support farmers to manage an increased amount of gathered data. However, the traditional approach to AgriDSS development is based on the knowledge transfer perspective, which has resulted in technology being considered as an isolated phenomenon and thus not adapted to farmers’ actual needs or their decision making in practice. The aim of this study was to improve understanding of farmers’ use of AgriDSS. The theoretical framework of distributed cognition (DCog) was used as a lense when investigating and analysing farmers' use of a software tool developed for calculation of variable rate application (VRA) files for nitrogen (N) fertilisation from satellite images called CropSAT. In a case study, the unit of analysis was broadened to the whole socio-technical system of farmer’s decision-making, including other people and different kinds of tools and artefacts. The results reveal that CropSAT functions as a tool to support decision making and promotes social learning through the use of enhanced professional vision.