This paper presents the results of reserach undertaken to assess the suitability of multiple criteria decision techniques to agricultural planning proble,s. The conventional mathematical programming paradigm as used in the form of linear programming is inadequate to deal with real agricultural planning problems when multiple goals and objectives are important elements of the situation. Goal programming and multiple objective programming techniques offer the most promising prospects of application to these problems; therefore, these programming structures are examined from that point of view, and the advantages over conventional approaches are examined.