In the 20th century, we made tremendous advances in discovering fundamental principles in different scientific disciplines that created major breakthroughs in management and technology for agricultural systems, mostly by empirical means. However, as we enter the 21st century, agricultural research has more difficult and complex problems to solve.

        The environmental consciousness of the general public is requiring us to modify farm management to protect water, air, and soil quality, while staying economically profitable. At the same time, market-based global competition in agricultural products is challenging economic viability of the traditional agricultural systems, and requires the development of new and dynamic production systems. Fortunately, the new electronic technologies can provide us a vast amount of real-time information about crop conditions and near-term weather via remote sensing by satellites or ground-based instruments and the Internet, that can be utilized to develop a whole new level of management. However, we need the means to capture and make sense of this vast amount of site-specific data.

        Our customers, the agricultural producers, are asking for a quicker transfer of research results in an integrated usable form for site-specific management. Such a request can only be met with system models, because system models are indeed the integration and quantification of current knowledge based on fundamental principles and laws. Models enhance understanding of data taken under certain conditions and help extrapolate their applications to other conditions and locations.

Lajpat R. Ahuja; Liwang Ma; Terry A. Howell. Whole System Integration and Modeling — Essential to Agricultural Science and Technology in the 21st Century. In: Lajpat R. Ahuja; Liwang Ma; Terry A. Howell (eds.) Agricultural system models in field research and technology transfer. Boca Raton, CRC Press LLC, 2002 (adapted).