Agriculture is changing rapidly all over the world. Intensification, diversification, optimizing scarce resources, integrated pest management, sustainability and climate change are key issues for agricultural institutes. The best solutions will be found by integrating disciplines. Organized thinking about future farming requires forecasting of the implications of alternative ways to farm and to develop agriculture. Systems thinking and systems simulation are indispensable tools for such integration and extrapolation. About 150 scientists and senior research leaders from all over the world...

Although the application of systems approaches in agricultural research and natural resource management is a rather new field, there is already increasing demand for implementation of these approaches. This will require a critical mass of specialists in national agricultural research systems and international agricultural research centers. While these institutions are setting themselves up for systems research, the experience that has been gained in this area needs to be evaluated, further possibilities need to be explored, and new objectives and targets need to be set. This book...