ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the use of an agroclimatic model to suggest agricultural research priorities in Brazil. More generally, it discusses several aspects of the modeling activities conducted at Brazilian Public Corporation for Agricultural Research (EMBRAPA). The goal of modeling and simulation at EMBRAPA is to obtain several feedbacks that act upon researchers and research managers, helping them to gain understanding about complex systems and to set reasonable research priorities. The chapter lists some of the systems of interest to EMBRAPA, and describes the important point that EMBRAPA takes farms as the focal systems to be studied. Although EMBRAPA’s computer installations in the field of scientific data processing are among the best in Latin America, due to telecommunication problems most research stations do not have as yet remote terminals linked to the central computer. In the meantime, even with the difficulties mentioned, models are being used at EMBRAPA to set some research priorities.
