News / 2023 /

Integrated Decision Support System

February 2023

Texas A&M’s Blackland Research Center and Agricultural and Food Policy Center have developed the Integrated Decision Support System (IDSS), a modeling platform containing SWAT, APEX, and a farm-level economic simulation model (FARMSIM). The IDSS was developed as part of a 10-year USAID project to analyze the economic, food production, and environmental effects of small-scale irrigation in Ethiopia and Ghana. FARMSIM is being used by Dr. Jean-Claude Bizimana to evaluate the probable environmental, crop production, and economic impacts of adopting agricultural conservation practices and technologies for small and medium-sized farms. In an extension of that work, the team is developing a version of HAWQS (at 10 km grid scale) for Ghana to evaluate the impacts of replanting cacao plantations and small-scale mining on soil and water quality.

Future plans include incorporation of FARMSIM into HAWQS to greatly facilitate its use in conjunction with SWAT+. See www.afpc.tamu.edu for more information.

The University of Florida Livestock Innovation Lab is working with Blackland Research Center (Dr. Jaehak Jeong) and the Texas A&M University Agriculture and Food Policy Institute (Dr. Bizimana) to develop an IDSS model to analyze the effects of livestock stocking rates on livestock production and farm-scale economics in Rwanda.

COVID has made last few years a challenge for many of us. But “with a little help from our friends” we are getting back on track informing colleagues around the world of many of the exciting improvements and applications of these shared tools. Over the next several weeks, we will share a brief summary of the news. Please contact the relevant scientists for more information, and please send us summaries of any efforts that you would like to have included in this section of our website.