FarmSTEPS, a model for spatial-temporal exploration of diversified and sustainable crop sequence plans for crop farms

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Abstract Crop diversification could enhance economic and environmental sustainability of crop farming, but achieving this requires careful planning that accounts for crop interrelationships in a rotation or spatial layout. Several models have been devised to design diversified crop rotations or crop spatial layouts, but they often fail to capture farm settings, production constraints, and sustainability objectives specific to a farm at both temporal and spatial scales. To fill this gap, we developed a novel rule-based whole-farm planning model, FarmSTEPS, for systematically exploring diversified and sustainable farm crop sequence plans in a spatial-temporally explicit manner. FarmSTEPS comprises multiple farm characterization modules, an algorithm for generating farm crop sequence plans, and a multi-attribute decision-aid tool. Users first characterize farm configurations and plot properties, and parameterize candidate crops according to the actual situation of farms. Subsequently the algorithm generates and evaluates all feasible crop sequence plans for each plot from the first planning period until the end of the planning window, subject to user-defined sequence- and farm-level constraints. Eventually, the model suggests a set of superior farm plans using the multi-attribute decision-aid tool. We illustrate the model with a Chinese wheat-maize farm to explore future three-year cropping plans targeting five sustainability objectives: maximizing gross margin and minimizing four environmental impacts (groundwater depletion, pesticide input, aquatic eutrophication, GHG emission). The model generated 213,679 feasible plans, with 128 being Pareto-optimal in terms of the five objectives. Overall, relative to the wheat-maize baseline, these optimal plans increased gross margin by 3-50% while mitigating environmental impacts by 10-56%, largely through the inclusion of tuber and oil crops, though trade-offs existed between economic and environmental benefits. The case study demonstrates that FarmSTEPS is an effective tool for designing diversified and sustainable crop sequence plans tailored to farm-specific conditions while informing stakeholders on potential benefits and trade-offs among sustainability objectives.

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