HMP-Coffee: A Hierarchical Multicriteria Model to Estimate the Profitability for Small Coffee Farming in Colombia  
[PERSON]  
1 Departamento de Telematica, Universidad del Cauca, Popayin 190002, Cauca, Colombia;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.C.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.S.M. );  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.C.C. );  
2  
[PERSON]  
1 Departamento de Telematica, Universidad del Cauca, Popayin 190002, Cauca, Colombia;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.C.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.S.M. );  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.C.C. );  
2  
[PERSON]  
1 Departamento de Telematica, Universidad del Cauca, Popayin 190002, Cauca, Colombia;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.C.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.S.M. );  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.C.C.) [PERSON]  
3 Entrae-INPT-ENSAT-EI-Purpan, University of Toulouse, UMR 1248 AGIR, F-31326 Castanet Tolosan, France;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.-H.R. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.-N.A.) [PERSON]  
2 INRAE-INPT-ENSAT-EI-Purpan, University of Toulouse, UMR 1248 AGIR, F-31326 Castanet Tolosan, France;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.-H.R. ); [PERSON](J.-N.A.) [PERSON]  
2  
[PERSON]  
1 Departamento de Telematica, Universidad del Cauca, Popayin 190002, Cauca, Colombia;  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (D.C.C. ); [EMAIL_ADDRESS] (M.S.M. );  
[EMAIL_ADDRESS] (J.C.  
interviews providing recall data of recent activities and related costs and returns. Furthermore, the omission of relevant information in estimating profitability results in values far from reality [6; 7]. The omitted information are related to production costs (e.g., family labor, transportation or maintenance, and administration expenses) [7] and the lack of accounting records (e.g., balance sheet management, ledgers) [8]. Making decisions based on incorrect profitability values negatively impacts the livelihoods of millions of farmers and thereby restricts poverty alleviation. There are several hierarchical multicriteria approaches described in the literature that have characterized the profitability of diverse cropping systems. For instance, [PERSON] et al. [9] and [PERSON] et al. [10] characterize the profitability of various cropping systems by establishing hierarchical structures and relationships between criteria. However, these approaches are conceptual solutions and do not offer an implementation for testing. Other studies have introduced hierarchical structures-based solutions to estimate how different climatic, soil, and crop variables impact the profitability in several crops, ranging from rice to flowers [11; 12; 13]. Nevertheless, these solutions omit economic data such as production costs, production volume, and the international market. Furthermore, these solutions are not adapted to the context of coffee production systems. [PERSON] et al. [14] and [PERSON] et al. [15] propose multicriteria hierarchical approaches for estimating the profitability of several crops by considering climatic variables and output. It is noticeable that the scarce adoption of modern information management tools in small-scale coffee farms located in developing countries is a severe barrier to adopting data-driven agricultural economic solutions [16]. This paper proposes a non-data-driven and interpretable approach, called HMP-Coffee, to precisely estimate the level of profitability in small-scale coffee productions in developing countries. Besides, to the best of our knowledge, HMP-Coffee is the first approach that considers the three coffee profitability factors (production cost, production volume, and international market) defined by the International Coffee Organization (ICO) [17; 18]. To achieve the non-data-driven characteristic, HMP-Coffee considers a Contextual Knowledge Phase, based on expert knowledge, that allows creating a conceptual model about the profitability in small-scale coffee productions. To accomplish interpretability, HMP-Coffee includes a Hierarchical-Multicriteria Phase that translates the conceptual model into a hierarchical qualitative model. This model can estimate the level of profitability in small coffee productions.