A review of agent-based modeling for simulation of agricultural systems

Abstract

In this manuscript global research trends are analyzed in agent-based modeling (ABM), which is applied to face the inherent complexity of agricultural systems. The search was carried out in Scopus, during the period 2009-2019, and the VOSviewer© software was used as a bibliometric tool. The results show that ABM is used under two approaches: research and policy evaluation, and in three thematic areas: systems and computation sciences, geography and ecology and environmental science. The purpose of this study is to investigate three types of phenomena: land-use changes, water management and agricultural policy evaluation. ABM has been shown to be useful for exploring and understanding the society-nature relationship of agricultural systems under an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, and for supporting decision-making processes via its application in a Latin American context, which for our purposes is still of utmost importance.