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Abstract

User involvement in development of decision support tools for more environmentally friendly plant protection.

Description

Plant Protection Online (PVO) is an internet based decision support tool, targeting individual farmer decision making, supporting a more environmentally friendly arable production. Despite the features and huge amount of knowledge embedded in this tool, the dissemination is poor and unsatisfying. The aim of this project is to explore barriers for application of the PVO and to involve farmers in a dialogue as to how they would like the tool to operate given their way of forming decisions and managing the farm.

This research is oriented by the idea, that decision support tools should be able to communicate directly with the way that decisions are actually made and organised at the farm, so that the system presents to the farmer the kind of information needed in practise and asks for the kinds of observation that farm management is based upon. The barriers are examined using a combination of questionnaire survey and focus group interviews. The project is carried out in close co-operation among social scientists, economists, agronomists and system developers.