A Gateway for Technology Adoption in Agriculture: a Design-Thinking Approach for a Compliance Decision Support System

Abstract

Globally, consumers are becoming more conscious of unsustainable farming practices. The appetite for safely produced, compliant and pesticide free crops is increasing. In response to these demands, the Argentinian government has issued new regulation to govern the application of <em>good agricultural practices </em>affecting production, storage and selling activities. This legislation is an opportunity to incentivise farm owners to adopt technology for recording mandatory information which has previously proven difficult. This project aims to test whether compliance software is an effective gateway for shifting farmers decision-making to technology, and from intuition-based to evidence-based, improving agricultural productivity. Understanding and integrating technology into their existing practices a substantial challenge for many farms. Consequently, the authors prototype a decision support system (DSS) for greenhouse farmers in Argentina that can track traceability of batches of crop and their treatments to reduce compliance risk. Incorporating lessons learned from previous DSS projects, the authors utilise design-thinking strategies to include end-users in the development of the system. Through such a tool, the authors can trial innovative features to test receptiveness of farm owners to utilise information technology solutions for decision-making, and identify barriers to data collection and technology adoption.