The Farm as a Purposeful System

Farms come in many types. Consider some of the words we use to describe and categorize them: peasant, subsistence, quasi-subsistence, quasi-commercial, commercial or hobby; family, plantation, cooperative, corporation, collective or State; single or multi-enterprise; crop, livestock or mixed; intensive or extensive; irrigated, rain-fed or factory; poor or good; nomadic, swidden, traditional or modern. We could add many more words to this list. But no matter how we might categorize any particular farm, it can always be seen as an organization involved in crop or livestock production or both and constituting a purposeful system. It is this generalization that provides the basis for the conceptual framework that we present. By their nature as purposeful systems, farms are subject to the principles of management pertinent to such organizations. A converse characteristic is the uniqueness of every farm due in particular to its location in space and time, its history, resources and human components. This uniqueness of each farm must never be forgotten. It means that while the general principles of farm system management are appropriate for any particular farm, their application must generally lead to different decisions for each particular farm. In what follows we will explore the concept of the individual farm as an organization constituting a purposeful system.