Integrating Sustainability Into the Machinery Selection Decisions in the Agriculture Sector

Mechanization in the agriculture sector requires well-informed technology selection decisions and a balance of financial and nonfinancial considerations. This article integrates sustainability and technical considerations into farm machinery selection decisions. Using an industry case study-where technology selection for the mechanization process is imperative-a multimethod decision-making framework is developed to select the best rice harvest machinery. For this purpose, the Delphi method is used to systematically identify the most relevant decision criteria; the analytic hierarchy process determines the criteria's importance, and the fuzzy technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution is applied to rank the alternatives. Given the wide variety of available harvesting technologies in the competitive market, it is shown that the sustainability criteria are receiving recent recognition among agriculture practitioners. The findings provide insights for the producers to help improve production, and exportation of the local brands in accordance with the international market needs.