Modeling Flexible Plans for Agricultural Production Management

Analyzing in what circumstance and why an agricultural production system performs acceptably well or fails requires models of management practices and work processes. A farmer’s management task relies on planned and reactive behaviors that enable him to organize his work in function of known and exploitable regularities, and to adapt it to uncontrollable contingencies as they occur. Consequently, a farm production manager exhibits a decision-making behavior that seems to rely heavily on a kind of flexible plan. This paper aims at presenting a generic model of such plans that are similar to programs. Once represented in this framework a production management plan can be simulated in various exogenous conditions, which enables the study of the underlying production management behavior.