Actor model for farmers’ crop management decisions: The deepfarming model

Abstract

Plant growth and farmers’ crop management decisions are strongly infl uenced by the climatic conditions. To simulate the interplay between crop management activities, crop growth and weather and its changes due to long-term development of climate change, the actor model DeepFarming was developed. DeepFarming has a high spatial and temporal resolution and is very closely linked with the agricultural sector model ACRE und the plant growth model Biological. ACRE delivers data on the yearly cultivation plan and Biological on the daily development stage of the plants to the actors. DeepFarming represents 28 different actor types, which were derived from statistical data on types of farm and their management practices at district level and are allocated to the drainage basin using specifi c rules. Key task of the actors is to make decisions on the timing of the crop management such as sowing, fertilising and harvesting for each crop. Relevant decision parameters are information on the daily weather conditions, soil saturation level and the development stage of the plants. As a result, the initialisation of the actors in the drainage basin is presented.