Integrated Assessment and Modeling of Agricultural Mechanization in Potato Production of Iran by Artificial Neural Networks

Mechanization is a concept and cannot be measured directly, so we used appropriate indicators in order to determine mechanization status for the first time in this field of study. In this paper, based on energy and power availability, four indicators, namely machinery energy ratio, mechanization index, productivity level of consumed power, and mechanization level, were selected for assessing agricultural mechanization in potato production of Iran using integrated assessment and modeling (IAM) to provide insight into the potential impacts of policy changes. To do an IAM in agricultural mechanization, we used pervasive analysis using more than 90 features in sample farms. This IAM is the first generalized model in agricultural mechanization. The main purpose of this study is presenting and showing capability of ANNs to model agricultural mechanization status and indicating best ANN model. Finally, a two hidden layer model with these features showed best performance: generalized feed-forward network with Levenberg Marquart learning rule and Bias Axon transfer function with 4–10 neurons in two hidden layers which have 27 input items for modeling four outputs. In this study, ANN models were introduced and applied to help IAM investigation which integrating production factors to have better knowledge about agricultural system of potato production in a wide region.