<b>Sistema de informação para a agricultura</b>

Abstract

The agricultural sector has become more and more complex, as it depends on the influences of economical, political and technological factors, more risky and much more demanding on the farm manager’s abilities. For this reason, to exercise his functions with efficiency, the farm manager needs to have a larger quantity of data available and better methods of processing that data to transform it in useful information. At the methods of processing that data to transform it in useful information. At the same time, the manager needs to perfect his analytical abilities in better utilization of the information used in decision making. In this sense, this work aims to present some models of agricultural information systems proposed in the literature, emphasizing their common characteristics to assist in the system implementation to attend to the Brazilian agricultural sector. After extensive bibliographical revision, a presentation of various models proposed by various authors, and a presentation of the computer use in agriculture, we can conclude that it is essential that research be developed to know the type of information desired by the decision maker and the form in which it is used in the administrative process. It is not conceivable to develop models without this presumption. The agricultural information system ougth to users’ differentiated goals and give useful responses. The user needs to be conscious of the value of the system and to have active participation in its implementation, since he is the principal component of the system.