Rationale: Agricultural systems with biological components interacting with social and economic elements are extremely complex in nature. This course is designed to introduce concepts and techniques of systems analysis in an agricultural context and to illustrate the value of holistic approach through a number of quite different case studies. The manager or the administrator of such a system constantly looks forward to those techniques or methods, which helps him in planning, scheduling and controlling the activities in the system. The course should help students in identifying rational ways to improve the efficiency of agricultural systems.

Catalog Description: Nature of farming systems; techniques and methods of simulation of farming systems; model building and evaluation; application of systems analysis techniques in farming systems context; linear programming, transportation and assignment problems and network analysis methods (CPM and PERT).