The Application of Decision Support System to Forecast the Yield of Agricultural Products in Taiwan

To make agricultural marketing policies be carried out more easily, this research establishes a decision support system by using the rice field of one farmer in Changhwa area, Taiwan as the example and explains how this decision support system works. Actually, this research has three purposes: 1.To study how key production factors affect the yield of rice variety No.67. 2.To establish a decision support system to forecast the yield of rice variety No.67. 3.To use Visual Basic to write computer programs which can simulate how yield changes if key production factors change. There are four sections in this paper: literature review, the establishment of decision support system, example and conclusion. 1. Literature Review This section is divided into two parts: situation of agricultural status data and introduction of decision support system. 1.1 Situation of agricultural status data Currently, the main information source for the collection of agricultural status data is from field investigating staffs. Taiwan Government started to establish field investigating staffs in 1986 and in 1997 there were 2441 of them. The content of their work mainly predict the yield or production of fish, livestock and other agricultural products. When the disaster comes, they also need to report or evaluate the damage degree of Agriculture. Hsiao(1997) pointed out that the accuracy and timing of the forecast made by field investigating staffs needed to improve. Hence, this study tries to use the decision support system to improve the accuracy and timing of forecast. The pre-requisite is to determine who should be the knowledge provider of this system because the degree of profession can affect the accuracy of forecast of the decision support system. Our research's cooperating rice farmer has being in rice farming over 20 years and knows local temperate condition, local environment and land management very well. He has an agricultural degree, owns an agricultural chemicals store and often attends seminars to learn knowledge about rice farming. Also, this farmer is over 55 years old with a mild temper and can control mood and stress maturally. Hence, the selected farmer is a professional with high credibility. From years of experience, rice farming farmers know how rice yield changes when any of the key production factors changes such as the strength of local wind and soil condition. More important is that they also know how key production factors affect each other. Thus, the yield of rice forecasted by these farmers can reach a reasonable accuracy.