1992 Annual Report for AS92-004
CROPS, The Crop Rotation Planning System, for Whole Farm Environmental and Economic Planning
Summary
The CROPS system is a computer program that addresses the farm-level problem of sustainable agriculture: how does a farmer implement sustainable practices on a particular farm? Given a set of goals for production levels of specific crops, a map of the farm's fields with associated soil and topographic data, and economic information about the farm, the CROPS program generates one or more whole-farm plans over a six-year planning horizon. The plans are repeating; they meet the requirements of the NRCS; and they incorporate the principles of sustainable agriculture, promoting reduced leaching and runoff of nutrients and pesticides while maintaining economic profitability.
Objectives
The goals of this project were to expand the applicability of CROPS to include relatively unconstrained farming operations like vegetable producing farms, to add more detail in the areas of livestock and manure management, and to provide for field testing by four cooperating farmers in two states. Specific objectives were:
1.) Implement and evaluate a whole farm planning system (CROPS) to assist farmers in developing crop rotation plans, adopting environmentally sound practices, and complying with state and federal land-use regulations.
2.) Expand the livestock component of the CROPS system to include manure management.
3.) Improve the economic evaluation component of CROPS and establishing data and file-transfer linkages with the PLANETOR program (Hawkins et al. 1990).
4.) Modify CROPS for vegetable production systems and test it on a small scale vegetable farm.
Methods
The methodology for implementation and evaluation was straightforward: demonstrate the planner to farmers and agricultural agency planning experts, and modify the system as needed in response to the critiques elicited. Revisions to the CROPS system were interactive and based on a participatory process. Teams of two to six specialists worked with the programmer and project coordinator to design, implement, and supervise the testing of aspects of the program as it was developed. This participatory approach has provided several new features to the CROPS system and has greatly increased user-acceptance of the program and its enhancements.
Efforts to improve the economic component of CROPS focused on two tasks: moving toward a comparative approach and helping farmers determine what an optimal crop mix might be in the absence of environmental constraints. This economic optimum becomes the default target crop mix in situations in which the farmer wants to explore new options. Researchers also aimed to standardize the enterprise budgets in CROPS to make them consistent with those in PLANETOR and to import the plans generated from CROPS into PLANETOR.
To address the specific problems of vegetable production, the researchers expected to use a planning methodology based on "simulated annealing," a solution method for complex problems involving multiple combinations of options that don't lend themselves well to simple mathematical description. However, this task was the most speculative of the proposed work, and based on an initial review of the vegetable planning problem with experts and the cooperating farmer, they abandoned this approach and initiated research into hierarchical planning methodologies that can deal with planning at multiple levels of specificity.
Results
Based on user evaluations, it was learned that the program would have to generate plans that were more flexible and be able to produce more reports and educational materials. The nutrient management and economic summary aspects of the program needed more development and detail. These needs were addressed through development of new algorithms and routines.
Based on the expertise of several nutrient management specialists, new algorithms were developed for computer inventory of animal manure production, storage, and nutrient content. Further algorithms were developed to constrain the application of animal manure to specific fields based on field characteristics, environmental hazards, and crop nutrient needs. A stand-alone program was developed to test the nutrient management algorithms and this program has been extensively tested by the state's nutrient management specialists. The stand-alone program includes new features: inventory of animal manure production, storage, and nutrient content; field manure level constraints based on field characteristics; a new algorithm for determining crop yields and nutrient needs based on soil, topology, and management considerations.
Improvements to the economic component of CROPS were made in the basic design of the problem and in crop target selection. The system was modified to allow the entry and display of economic information based on a comparison to the current or "benchmark" scenario.
Also, an optimal crop target selection program was added to allow farmers to use the system in a more exploratory way. This optimization component is itself a major accomplishment, allowing farmers to request an optimal crop mix for the specific fields on their farms and including the full range of constraints from the farm program and the 0-85 option.
Working closely with agencies dealing with environmental stewardship, significant progress was made toward the goal of providing farmers with integrated, multiple-objective and multiple resource plans. Perhaps the most significant stride was the decision by NRCS (formerly the Soil Conservation Service) to support the inclusion of CROPS in their field office computer system (FOCS). This means that the whole-farm planning concept in CROPS will influence farm planning nationwide, helping NRCS to promote total resource conservation and sustainable agriculture.