Sustainable Intensification Project

SIP research featured in Arable Farming and Farmers’ Guardian

8 Mar 2017

SIP research on the use of decision support tools in agriculture has been featured in the March editions of Arable Farming and Farmers’ Guardian.

The work, led by the University of Cambridge in association with other SIP partners, investigated the use of decision support tools on-farm in England and Wales.

The first published paper from this project (available here) is featured in both of the industry magazines and presents results about how developers of decision support tools can design and deliver tools effectively so that farmers and their advisers want to use them. A number of good design and delivery features are suggested to ensure that tools are useful, relevant, and easy-to-use. Industry groups are encouraged to keep in mind the design checklist when developing new systems.

Further outputs are expected from this specific project in due course. These will focus on how developers of decision support tools can be encouraged to adopt user-centred design practices, specifically how to perform ‘decision context assessments’ before launching a tool into an on-farm decision environment. A further output will explore how tools can be shaped through user interaction, and also how they might shape agricultural communities into which they are launched.

For more info, please contact the lead researcher Dr David Rose via dcr31@cam.ac.uk

Click here for the online Farmer's Guardian article.