Feasible and sustainable hydroponic technology acquisition: a multi-faceted decision-making approach

Hydroponic agricultural technology is becoming more and more popular worldwide as an alternative to traditional agriculture as it requires less land and energy to implement. Hydroponic technology can be implemented by fully acquiring the technology from an external supplier, by internally developing and installing the technology, or by collaboration with an external supplier to develop and install the technology. In the current study, a framework of decision analysis was developed and carried out to assess hydroponic agricultural technology acquisition approaches in terms of technology implementation cost and sustainability. Taguchi design of experiments was used first to determine significant criteria in hydroponic technology problem. A comprehensive survey was then distributed to a sample of 30 experts to determine significant criteria in this problem. AHP and Fuzzy AHP were used to classify decision criteria in terms of importance, where technological capability and experience level were ranked first and second. Ten multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods were implemented to rank the three technology acquisition approaches. Results showed that the internal acquisition alternative was unanimously found to be the most feasible and sustainable alternative. The second-best alternative was to collaborate with an external firm to implement the technology based on results of eight out of the ten MCDM methods. MCDM results were then validated using real-life case study data from three companies implementing the three different acquisition approaches in the United Arab Emirates. Performance rates according to case study findings were found to be 98.4%, 92.9% and 91.5% for internally developing, collaborating with external supplier and full external technology acquisition alternatives respectively. It could be concluded that internally developing hydroponic agricultural systems was the most feasible and sustainable alternative. Implications of this finding in terms of long-term plans, food security and energy consumption are discussed at the end.