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Motivated by global and regional challenges in food production and a broader consideration of ecosystem services, there has been a substantial increase in the demand for integrated agricultural systems models and spatially-distributed applications that can be used for regional and global assessments and as decision support tools. This demand marks a shift from earlier emphasis in single-crop point simulations and poses a significant challenge as cropping systems models need to improve and increase their capabilities to address multiple scales in a cohesive scientific manner and using updated computing platforms. In this article we discuss how the cropping systems model CropSyst has evolved to meet these new demands and provide some concepts for the future.