agriculture-food-systems-method

# Agriculture and Food Systems ## Bound the production system Record site, season, production system, crop/variety or livestock cohort, field/house/pond/herd/lot identifiers, jurisdiction, evidence cutoff, unit conventions, named owners, and excluded regulated actions. Keep observations, measurements, supplied assertions, calculations, hypotheses, and unknowns distinct. ## Build the seasonal production context 1. Assemble calendar events and ranges only from supplied or cited site evidence. 2. Align weather, soil, water, health, and production evidence to place and date. 3. Normalize area, mass, volume, head count, energy, and time units. 4. Calculate a yield/productivity range only when numerator and denominator share a defensible basis: `yield = produced quantity / applicable area or cohort basis`. 5. Label pests, disease, welfare, biosecurity, and food-safety items as observed, suspected, or unverified; never diagnose. ## Balance constrained resources For each time bucket calculate `balance = opening inventory + confirmed inflow - planned use - recorded loss - required closing reserve`. Apply it separately to water, nutrient/feed, seed/stock, labor, equipment, energy, storage, packaging, and transport with the correct unit and condition. Never substitute generic input rates or treat an unconfirmed delivery as available. Use [Seasonal Resource Balance](assets/seasonal-resource-balance.md). ## Preserve traceability and handoffs Build forward and backward chains from actual lot and custody events. Stop at missing links. Align harvest/collection ranges with qualified storage, transport, destination, demand period, grade, and unit. Treat all intervention, withdrawal, residue, temperature, disease, quarantine, recall, and acceptance thresholds as sourced local criteria or explicitly labeled hypotheses pending current qualified review. Use [Traceability, Logistics, and Risk Register](assets/traceability-logistics-risk-register.md). ## Join the seasonal plan Complete [Season and Food-System Plan](assets/season-system-plan.md). Cross-check calendar dependencies, yield ranges, resource balances, storage/logistics capacity, traceability, and evidenced demand. Preserve infeasible cases, disagreement, uncertainty, missing observations, broken lineage, and responsible escalation owners. ## Failure and authority boundary Stop quantitative comparison when system boundaries, seasons, lots, units, measurements, or safety evidence cannot be reconciled. Do not invent field observations, yield, diagnoses, input rates, market acceptance, or legal thresholds. Never prescribe pesticide, fertilizer, feed, medicine, veterinary dosage, irrigation, or treatment; diagnose; authorize purchases; certify or release product; order quarantine/recall; trade; or claim compliance. Require locally qualified agronomy, veterinary, soil/water, food-safety, biosecurity, environmental, operations, logistics, commercial, privacy, legal, and regulatory review. Read [Clean-room Authoring and Source Boundary](references/clean-room-authoring.md) before operational adaptation.