Possibilities of Using Decision Support Systems for Agriculture in Areas with High Agrarian Fragmentation

Abstract The capabilities of farms often limit the possibility of using technologically advanced agricultural digital solutions. However, the experience of many countries shows that several easily accessible digital solutions can bring results in the form of optimising agricultural production processes. Hence, the research aimed to recognise the usefulness of digital solutions for systems supporting decision-making in farms operating in areas with sizeable agrarian fragmentation and to determine the barriers to their implementation. In order to achieve the research objective, the survey questionnaire method was used—389 farms from the Małopolskie and Podkarpackie voivodeships (areas with the most significant scale of agrarian fragmentation in Poland) were examined. The study showed that 34% of the surveyed farms used at least one technology that can be classified as a decision-support system. Financial constraints, insufficient equipment, and insufficient IT knowledge were indicated as the most critical barriers to their use. From the perspective of the surveyed farms, the functions of the systems above considered to be the most useful were the possibility of estimating resource consumption, the possibility of receiving information on the occurrence of the risk of plant diseases and access to an accurate weather forecast for individual agricultural plots. It is worth noting that respondents noticed the usefulness of the systems mentioned above in the remote exchange of information.