farMAS: Multi-Agent based farm activity planning and execution system

Based on a conceptual model and ontology of a farm, this paper describes a multi-agent architecture for operations management activities (both planning and execution). The approach focusses on the identification of the relevant actors, their roles and the relationship between actors and defines the interactions to support the implementation of an experimental simulator. Cooperative interaction is ensured by governing decision policies, and by considering the farmers expertise in strategical and tactical decisions.The adoption of farMAS is expected to make farming operations more sustainable by helping to use resources efficiently even in particular challenging situations like extreme weather phenomena, the introduction of new, stress-tolerant crop varieties, more controlled use of pesticides, employment of advanced sensing technologies, sharing of farming equipment, the processing of the data obtained with the latter, and the near real-time reaction to it.