ABSTRACT
How can knowledge and research be structured to help people make better decisions with regard to managing their agroecosystems? Increasingly, recognition is growing among researchers and development workers that people are part of complex systems (Fitzhugh, 2000). Through various activities, they influence the structure and function of these agricultural and ecological systems to increase the benefits they derive from them, serving-in this way-as the primary managers of the system. The systems, however, consist of extensive, complex, and dynamic interrelationships, such that activity at one point of the system results in complex, sometimes counterintuitive or unpredictable reactions at other spatial or temporal points (Holling, 1986, 1992). Furthermore, the reactions may be lagged in time or difficult to perceive because of the scale at which they occur. Because of these, the consequences of various management strategies are not always easily recognized, making purposeful management of these complex systems difficult.
