Re-inventing model-based decision support with Australian dryland farmers. 1. Changing intervention concepts during 17 years of action research

We acknowledge the financial support over 17 years from many Australian funders, particularly the Grains Research & Development Corporation, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, and Land and Water Australia’s Managing Climate Variability Program. We gratefully acknowledge the enthusiastic participation and substantial contributions of many farmers, extension advisers, and agribusiness consultants. The Birchip Cropping Group is our current partner in developing and delivering Yield Prophet and better collaborators cannot be imagined.

Anderson JR , Dillon JL , Hardaker JB (1985) Socioeconomic modelling of farming systems. In ‘Agricultural systems research for developing countries. Proceedings of an International Workshop’. Hawkesbury Agricultural College, Richmond, NSW, 12–15 May 1985. (Ed. JV Remenyi) pp. 77–88. (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research: Canberra, ACT)

Bawden RJ (1991) Towards action research systems. In ‘Action research for change and development’. (Ed. O Zuber-Skerrit) pp. 10–35. (Gower: Aldershot, UK)

Bawden RJ , Ison RL (1992) The purpose of field-crop ecosystems: social and economic aspects. In ‘Field-crop ecosystems’. (Ed. CJ Pearson) pp. 11–35. (Elsevier: Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Blackett DS (1996) When adoption theory fails. In ‘Proceedings of the 8th Australian Agronomy Conference’. Toowoomba, Qld. Available at: www.regional.org.au/au/asa/1996/contributed/104blackett.htm

Boudourides MA (1998) Constructivism and education: a shopper’s guide. In ‘Conference on the Teaching of Mathematics’. Samos, Greece, 3–6 July 1998. Available at: www.math.upatras.gr/~mboudour/articles/constr.html (accessed 16 December 2008)

Burrell G , Morgan G (1979) ‘Sociological paradigms and organizational analysis.’ (Heinemann: London)

Carberry PS, Hochman Z, Hunt JR, Dalgliesh NP, McCown RL, Whish JPM, Robertson MJ, Foale MA, Poulton PL, van Rees H (2009) Re-inventing model-based decision support with Australian dryland farmers. 3. Relevance of APSIM to commercial crops. Crop & Pasture Science 60, 1044–1056. (accessed 16 December 2008).

Dreyfus HL (1991) ‘Being-in-the-World: a commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time.’ (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA)

Flood R (2001) The relationship of ‘systems thinking’ to action research. In ‘Handbook of action research’. (Eds P Reason, H Bradbury) pp. 133–144. (Sage Publications: London)

Flood R , Jackson M (1991) ‘Critical systems thinking.’ (John Wiley: Chichester, UK)

Hamilton G (1998) Co-learning tools: powerful instruments of change in Southern Queensland, Australia. In ‘Facilitating sustainable agriculture: participatory learning and adaptive management in times of environmental uncertainty’. (Eds NG Röling, MAE Wagemakers). pp. 172–190. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK)

Hamilton WD , Woodruff DR , Jamieson AM (1991) Role of computer-based decision aids in farm decision making and in agricultural extension. In ‘Climatic risk in crop production: models and management for the SAT and subtropics’. (Eds RC Muchow, JA Bellamy) pp. 411–423. (CAB International: Wallingford, UK)

Hayman PT, Easdown WJ (2002) An ecology of a DSS: reflections on managing wheat crops in the N.E. Australian grains region with WHEATMAN. Agricultural Systems 74, 57–77.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 16 December 2008).

McCown RL (2001b) Learning to bridge the gap between scientific decision support and the practice of farming: evolution in paradigms of model-based research and intervention from design to dialogue. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 52, 549–571.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar | (accessed 16 December 2008)

McCown RL , Cox PG , Keating BA , Hammer GL , Carberry PS , Probert ME , Freebairn DM (1994) The development of strategies for improved agricultural systems and land-use management. In ‘Opportunities, use, and transfer of systems research methods in agriculture to developing countries’. (Eds FWT Penning de Vries, P Goldsworthy) pp. 81–96. (Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, The Netherlands)

McCown RL, Hochman Z, Carberry PS (2002) Probing the enigma of the decision support system for farmers: learning from experience and from theory. Agricultural Systems 74, 1–10.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

McCown RL, Parton KA (2006) Learning from the historical failure of farm management models to aid farm management practice: 2. Three systems approaches. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 57, 157–172.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Merrill-Sands D , McAllister J (1988) ‘Strengthening the integration of on-farm client-oriented research and experiment station research in National Agricultural Research Systems (NARS): management lessons from nine country case studies.’ OFCOR-Comparative Study No. 1. (ISNAR: The Hague, The Netherlands)

Mingers J (1997) Multi-paradigm multimethodology. In ‘Multimethodology: the theory and practice of combining management science methodologies’. (Eds J Mingers, A Gill) pp. 1–20. (Wiley: Chischester, UK)

Noe E, Alroe HF (2003) Farm enterprises as self-organizing systems: a new transdisciplinary framework for studying farm enterprises? International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 11, 3–14.

Norman DW (2000) Farm management and the farming systems approach. In ‘A history of farming systems research’. (Ed. M Collinson) pp. 293–299. (CABI Publishing: Wallingford, UK)

Okali C , Sumberg J , Farrington J (1994) ‘Farmer participatory research.’ (Intermediate Technology Publications: London)

Popper KR (1994) ‘Knowledge and the body-mind problem.’ (Routledge: New York)

Prus R (1996) ‘Symbolic interaction and ethnographic research: intersubjectivity and the study of human lived experience.’ (State University of New York Press: Albany, NY)

Reason P , Bradbury H (2001) Introduction: inquiry and participation in search of a world worthy of human aspiration. In ‘Handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice’. (Eds P Reason, H Bradbury) (Sage Publications: London)

Ridge PE , Cox PG (2000) Market research for decision support for dryland crop production. In ‘Case studies in increasing the adoption of sustainable resource management practices’. (Eds AD Shulman, RJ Price) LWRRDC Occasional Paper 04/99, pp. 125–176.

Roling NG , Jiggins J (1998) The ecological knowledge system. In ‘Facilitating sustainable agriculture: participatory learning and adaptive management in times of environmental uncertainty’. (Eds NG Röling, MAE Wagemakers) pp. 283–311. (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK)

Rosenberg A (1995) ‘Philosophy of social science.’ (Westview Press: Boulder, CO)

Searle JR (1992) ‘The rediscovery of the mind.’ (MIT Press: Cambridge, MA)

Senge P (1990) ‘The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization.’ (Doubleday Currency: New York)

Shaner WW , Philipp PF , Schmehl WR (1982) ‘Farming systems research and development: guidelines for developing countries.’ (Westview Press: Boulder, CO)

Sorensen JT , Kristensen ES (1990) Systemic modelling: a research methodology in livestock farming, In ‘Global appraisal of livestock farming systems and study on their organisational levels: concept, methodology and results. Proceedings of Symposium organized by the INRA-SAD and the DIRAD-IEMVT’. Toulouse, France, 7–10 July 1990. (Eds A Gibon, B Matheron) pp. 45–57. (Commission of the European Communities: Brussels)

Trauffler G (2007) ‘Sustained innovation management: assimilating radical and incremental innovation management.’ (Palgrave Macmillan: New York)

Trauffler G, Herstatt C, Tschirky H (2005) How to transfer discontinuous technology into radical innovation: some evidence from three nanotech cases. International Journal of Technology Intelligence and Planning 1, 357–378.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

Tripp R , Woolley J (1989) ‘The planning stage of on-farm research: identifying factors for experimentation.’ (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center: Mexico City, Mexico; Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical: Cali, Colombia)

Turkle S (1997) Constructions and reconstructions of self in virtual reality: playing in the MUDS. In ‘Culture of the internet’. (Ed. S Kiesler) pp. 193–200. (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ)

van Eijk T (2000) Holism and FSR. In ‘A history of farming systems research’. (Ed. M Collinson) pp. 323–334. (FAO and CABI Publishing: Wallingford, UK)

Whyte WF (1991) ‘Participatory action research.’ (Sage Publications: London)

Whyte WF (1997) ‘Creative problem solving in the field: reflections on a career.’ (Alta Mira Press (Sage): Walnut Creek, CA)

Woodruff DR (1992) ‘WHEATMAN’: a decision support system for wheat management in subtropical Australia. Australian Journal of Agricultural Research 43, 1483–1499.
| Crossref | GoogleScholarGoogle Scholar |

¹We later learned that agricultural economists had applied OR’s economic optimising models to farming well before 1950 (Case and Williams 1957; McCown et al. 2006) and that even the idea of the dynamic simulation model was imported from OR in the 1950s by agricultural scientists working on time-dependent processes of environment and production (interview with C. T. deWit; McCown 2002a, p. 13).

²When a statement of belief, not fully substantiated as a true fact, survives critical discussion, (philosophically) it achieves some of the (epistemic) status of a fact.

³As people develop ways of conceptualizing and acting toward the world, they begin organizing their lives around those particular themes and practices. These ‘life-worlds’, ‘ways of life’, ‘social worlds’, and the like, are important since they entail the stocks of knowledge, frames of reference, and senses of direction that the people constituting this and that community take into account in developing their lines of action (Prus 1996, p. 248).

⁴Notable exceptions in Australia were the efforts of HowWet developers to link water balance to field infiltration measurements (Hamilton 1998) and the use of grain yield and protein as a bioassay for N status in WHEATMAN (Woodruff 1992).