Management strategies and practices

Many farmers claim that their main purpose is to make money, but that is too simplistic. Nowadays sustainability and environmental issues are becoming more important. Practices are the management options that apply to a particular sector. Operational elements describe the particular field operations. To be able to manage these forms of complex variability, a co-ordinated approach is required, integrating personal strategies, farm management goals and field operations. The strategies should reflect the values and preferences of the manager in the form of farmmanagement goals. The field operations then implement what is required to meet the management goals. This report presents a holistic farm  management system combining formal management strategies, personal management goals and the technology used. The personal management goals have been identified and analysed. A case study to combine the organic farming standard and the personal management goals for the major field operations is also presented. The report first categorises and defines the management strategies and practices into three main categories. The first category includes the formal management strategies, which have been analysed on Deliverable 2.1.1.and are the following: -Cross Compliance - Integrated Crop Management - Organic Farming - Water Policy - Market-based Farming - Field subsistence The second category is the farm management goals, which are: -Maximised Yield - Maximised Return - Minimised Environmental Impact - Input Replenishment - Minimised Financial Risk - Minimised Cost of Production The third category covers technologies and methods that can be applied to all or sub-operations, which are: - Conventional Practices - Intercropping - Variable Rate Technologies - Controlled Traffic - Contour Cultivation - Conservation Tillage - Robots - Autoguidance - Tracking – Tracing - Selective Harvesting Finally, six field operations have been chosen in consultation with Dr. Edward Nash, leader of WP4 that will be used on the development of the FMIS, which are: (1) Tillage (2) Seeding (3) Fertilising (4) Irrigation (5) Spraying (6) Harvesting For each of these field operations the farm management goals that apply to them have been identified and analysed. The analysis structure for each goal on each field operation includes the following stages: description of the management goal; principal information needed; decision objective and decision outcome.