Hi members of the DSSAT interest group;
This is my first time to address this group so first let me introduce myself. I
am a retired Professional Engineer (MIT,USC,UCSD) that has spent 40 years
building and applying computer simulation models mostly in the military and
industrial areas. About 7 years ago as I was trying to reduce my consulting
workload,  I became interested in Plant or Crop Simulation. This lead to some
research to see who was doing what and some trips to visit some of the most
active groups which I had identified. About three years ago on a visit to Hawaii
I was introduced to DSSAT 2.1. I was so impressed that I bought it on sight,
took it home and began working. I didn t work too hard since I new that Ver. 3.0
was just around the corner. My first attempt to do a simulation introduced me to
the task of generating my weather files. Since Ver. 2.1 didn t have Weatherman I
programmed my own weatherman so that I could download and properly modify the
California weather data available from the system known as CIMIS. When DSSAT 3.0
arrived I was pleased to find an excellent WeatherMan program, and annoyed that
I had wasted my time on a not so elegant program to do the same thing. This year
I attended the DSSAT3 course presented at the University of Georgia, partly
because I wanted to get serious about using DSSAT3 and partly to meet some of
the people behind this amazing program. In my opinion the Course was excellent
and the people I met were terrific.
 
Now for the purpose of my communication.
 
 I AM WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF DSSAT.
 
Some of the things I learned at the DSSAT course was that funding for supporting
this system had dried up around 1993 and the updating, bug fixing, and support
has been accomplished by a small group of very dedicated people in their spare
time. DSSAT is a BIG software system and support and updating is NO SMALL JOB.
Until some reliable source of funding can be found it seems to me that the
future of DSSAT is in the hands of the DSSAT interest group. The real question
is, is there enough interest in the user s to kept DSSAT  from dying?
I am very much impressed with the DSSAT simulating System. I think a very
excellent job has been done in its development, and it represents a very
powerful tool, one which should not be allowed to wider away and die. Its
continued development has all the promise of efficiently organizing the
knowledge we continue gaining about crop growth and development. With the
present state of the Personal computer we are not constrained by memory or speed
(as modeler s have been during the last 40 years) to include whatever level of
complexity we consider important. With DSSAT s continued development it is not
difficult to imagine a full fled windows version with a user interface which
will make the entire system easy to use.
 
WHO ARE THE USERS?  - OR - WHO SHOULD THE USERS BE?
 
As I have pondered this question I can see three groups that should be
interested in having such a tool.
1.)  Agricultural Consultants, which should include both private and government
as in the Agricultural Extension  Service. As a private consultant in industry,
I visualize the Consultant developing a data base of models representing his
clients crops and cropping systems. If DSSAT is not a good enough tool for this
vision it can certainly be made to be that tool. He also develops a data base of
the clients fields and the field history. Notice that in the case of the private
consultant the eventual beneficiary is the farmer who must pay for the service.
In the case of the Extension service the eventual beneficiary is the government
that has a better farming system, thus the government must pay. This implies
that some of the support of the modeling effort should be part of the extension
service budget. I include in this group the International Development Centers
which I assume are groups of specialized consultants who s main clients are
government of major government support agencies. Certainly the development
centers for rice and fertilizer have been prime movers in the modeling field.
But where is the support from the other development centers?
2.)  Agricultural Teachers, which should include those people who are
responsible for the learning and training of our future farmers. I cannot
visualize a more appropriate tool to help students integrate all of the various
disciplines which are required by a farmer. It is also the proper tool to teach
the concept of systems, farming systems and ecological systems. It seems to me
that in this day and age a student headed for farming of farm extension service
should leave school with complete knowledge and confidence in using a DSSAT
system. It also seems to me that it will be more effective if all the teachers
focus on one system instead of everyone developing their own system which will
have the problems of inadequate resources for documentation, support and update.
3.)  The big farmers. They are the ones that have a lot to gain by being sure
that their operations are run as efficient as possible. I met one of these at
the recent course and I gather that he is possibly the first one to check in to
see if  DSSAT is a suitable tool to help in his management of a rather large
acreage in South America.
 
While I think that the above groups will eventually use a DSSAT of some other
follow on program, it will take some time for the DSSAT message to be properly
developed and delivered. Some people call that selling. Until then those people
who are interested in DSSAT will have to figure some way to keep it alive. If we
all got together it seems to me that it could be done. If enough of those
interested were to volunteer to assume some responsibility say to support a
particular part of the program or provide development of some particular feature
or new module then some of the load of supporting and moving this software along
could be removed from the present leadership. They could then focus on planning
and coordinating and selling.
 
Well those are my thoughts at this time and I thought that I would share them in
case anyone was interested. I am very enthusiastic about the entire DSSAT
program and sincerely hope that some way will be found to keep it moving and
developing. I ll certainly volunteer to do what I can which might help the
program.
While I m very interested to hear what other people think, I m not going to be
able to answer any messages during the next week since I ll be in the High
Sierra s and without a computer.
With lots of enthusiasm
Ro Favreau