Multicriteria analysis for agricultural resource management: A critical survey and future perspectives

This paper reviews multicriteria analysis applied to agricultural resource management. The applications utilize either methods for selecting multiattribute discrete alternatives (including multiattribute utility theory) or methods for solving multiobjective planning problems (including goal programming). Our main purpose is to classify and evaluate the criteria (attributes, objectives) used for modeling agricultural systems and to identify the difficulties for practitioners in applying the methodology. The fields of study in agricultural decisions requiring further investigation are also discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.