Limited availability and access to seeds of improved varieties are often blamed for the low adoption of legume-based rotations. In this paper, we use a case study of chickpea and lentil production in Ethiopia and a gendered lens to... more
Limited availability and access to seeds of improved varieties are often blamed for the low adoption of legume-based rotations. In this paper, we use a case study of chickpea and lentil production in Ethiopia and a gendered lens to identify other determinants of farmers’ decisions for the adoption of improved legume varieties. Mixed methods were used to collect sex and age disaggregated data through 360 household surveys, 11 focus group discussions, and 8 key informant interviews. The analysis focused on key adoption parameters, including access to land, labor, improved seed varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, agriculture information, and credit. The main challenges identified include: differential access to timely and adequate seeds of improved varieties, quality fertilizers, and pesticides; availability of credit at an affordable interest rate; and equitable access to information. As compared to men, we found women’s access to these resources to be low and women’s cost production ...
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ii The CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH (ZEF) was established in 1995 as an international, interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Bonn. Research and teaching at ZEF addresses political, economic and ecological... more
ii The CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH (ZEF) was established in 1995 as an international, interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Bonn. Research and teaching at ZEF addresses political, economic and ecological development problems. ZEF closely cooperates with national and international partners in research and development organizations. For information, see: www.zef.de. ZEF – Discussion Papers on Development Policy are intended to stimulate discussion among researchers, practitioners and policy makers on current and emerging development issues. Each paper has been exposed to an internal discussion within the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and an external review. The papers mostly reflect work in progress. The Editorial Committee of the
Neighbourhood effects on land use change are very common. Therefore, they are often included in spatially explicit models of land use change and other spatial analyses. Neighbourhood indices, however, depend strongly on the spatial extent... more
Neighbourhood effects on land use change are very common. Therefore, they are often included in spatially explicit models of land use change and other spatial analyses. Neighbourhood indices, however, depend strongly on the spatial extent set for calculating them. So far, most of the existing land-use change analyses or models using neighbourhood indices assumed some predefined neighbourhood extents without proving whether the selected extents are optimal for the analysis of the corresponding land use dynamics. This paper presents a methodological procedure to identify (i) the optimal neighbourhood extent and (ii) the range of scale-dependency in neighbourhood effects of different land use types and different types of land conversions. We applied this procedure in the canton Valais of Switzerland, an inner Alpine mountainous region. The findings clearly show the differences in optimal neighbourhood extent and the scale-dependency among conversion types. The procedure introduced in t...
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Rapid development of multi-dimensionally, multi-scale, timely updated socio-ecological geodata presents an opportunity as potential information resource for supporting effective decisionmaking of stakeholders involved with food systems,... more
Rapid development of multi-dimensionally, multi-scale, timely updated socio-ecological geodata presents an opportunity as potential information resource for supporting effective decisionmaking of stakeholders involved with food systems, from daily routines of individuals to strategic decisions of manager and policy-makers. However, the use of this type of big data toward supporting the sustainability of food systems at different scales still fall short of (i) what information commonly needed by food system actors to response and adapt to socio-ecological change and enhance the system performance, (ii) interoperability between different types of data across scales, and (iii) sufficient guidance to utilize big data resources for diverse users' contexts and needs. In this reviewbased and conceptual analysis, we propose a framework with functional blocks for designing integrated agro-informatics systems that organize uses of big socio-ecological data for research and development wit...
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Research Interests: Earth Sciences, Climate Change, Ecosystem Services, Agricultural Development, Stakeholders, and 15 moreLand management, Case Studies, Capacity Building, Corporate culture, Policy making, Environmental Sciences, Communities, Land Use, Farmers, Incentives, CHEMICAL SCIENCES, Land Degradation, Private Sector, Sustainability, and economic aspects
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The CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH (ZEF) was established in 1995 as an international,
Assessment of future multiple ecosystem services driven by alternative land-use policies is useful for supporting decisions about what and where to invest for the best overall environmental and developmental outcomes. The task faces a... more
Assessment of future multiple ecosystem services driven by alternative land-use policies is useful for supporting decisions about what and where to invest for the best overall environmental and developmental outcomes. The task faces a great challenge due to the inherent complexity of humanlandscape systems and trade-offs between rural livelihood improvement, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration. Agent-based system models have been recognized to be well suited to simulate the co-evolutions of the community and landscape systems in response to policy interventions. The study applies the Land Use Dynamics Simulator (LUDAS) framework to a mountain watershed in central Vietnam for anticipating trade-offs among rural livelihoods, forest biodiversity and carbon stocks under different land-use policy interventions. Changes in plant species diversity driven by land cover change were calculated using the species-area relationships that were estimated based on vegetation surveys....
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It is important to increase the resilience of rural landscapes in the face of global changes. It is widely recognized that integrated modeling is often a methodological choice to study landscape resilience because the task is often beyond... more
It is important to increase the resilience of rural landscapes in the face of global changes. It is widely recognized that integrated modeling is often a methodological choice to study landscape resilience because the task is often beyond the ability of direct, empirical studies. However, so far there has not yet been a systemized, critical review on methodological abilities current modeling approaches can have for supporting management for agricultural landscape resilience. This review study (i) highlighted the methodological abilities of integrated system modeling ideally needed for agricultural landscape management for resilience, (ii) reviewed strengths and weakness of common integrated modeling methods with respects to these required methodological abilities, and (iii) discussed perspectives of modeling research toward meeting these abilities. Based on common frameworks of socio-ecological systems, we identified nine methodological abilities that would be ideally needed for int...
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It is important to increase the resilience of food production systems in the face of a changing climate, land scarcity, and changing demographics and market conditions. As farm resilience is a high-level system property emerged from... more
It is important to increase the resilience of food production systems in the face of a changing climate, land scarcity, and changing demographics and market conditions. As farm resilience is a high-level system property emerged from social-ecological interactions, its direct measurement is difficult because it requires measuring the thresholds or boundaries that separate alternate stability regimes of the farm system. However, agricultural systems modeling for supporting agricultural resilience is still a very young science. Through critical review of state-of-the art literature, this study aims at highlighting the new requirements of agricultural system modeling as they apply to management for farm resilience, limitations of contemporary agricultural systems modeling approaches, and promising directions for future research on the field. Although a great deal of knowledge and tools about biophysical or social processes exist, agricultural system model research hardly ever seeks to d...
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institutions that shared the burden of hosting me was heart warming and very rewarding. The opinions expressed in this paper are strictly those of the authors. Land Decline in Land‐Rich Africa The Science Council of the CGIAR encourages... more
institutions that shared the burden of hosting me was heart warming and very rewarding. The opinions expressed in this paper are strictly those of the authors. Land Decline in Land‐Rich Africa The Science Council of the CGIAR encourages fair use of this material provided proper citation is made.
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The rural landscapes in Central Togo are experiencing severe land degradation, including soil erosion. However, spatially distributed information has scarcely been produced to identify the effects of landscape pattern dynamics on... more
The rural landscapes in Central Togo are experiencing severe land degradation, including soil erosion. However, spatially distributed information has scarcely been produced to identify the effects of landscape pattern dynamics on ecosystem services, especially the soil erosion control. In addition, relevant information for sustainable land and soil conservation is still lacking at watershed level. On this basis, using the LAndscape Management and Planning Tool for the Mo River basin (LAMPT_Mo), we (1) modelled soil erosion patterns in relation with land use/cover change (LUCC), land protection regime, and landforms, and (2) examined the efficiency of landscape redesign options on soil erosion amounts at basin scale. We found that Simulated historical net soil loss (NSL) for the Mo basin were approximately 26, 23, 27, and 44t/ha/yr, for 1972, 1987, 2000, and 2014, respectively. These simulated NSLs were higher than the tolerable soil loss limits for the Tropics. Steep slopes (≥15°), ...
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Despite the many advantages of sustainable intensification (SI), the level of adoption of SI practices in African smallholding farms is still very low, highlighting the need for adequate methods for monitoring farm sustainability.... more
Despite the many advantages of sustainable intensification (SI), the level of adoption of SI practices in African smallholding farms is still very low, highlighting the need for adequate methods for monitoring farm sustainability. Research on SI and related poverty alleviation strategies focus either on the “problems” or on the “solutions” for agricultural livelihood systems (ALS) with separate sets of indicators developed accordingly. Bridging the two approaches, we propose an indicator set to assess the criticality of a resource to ALSs in order to support smallholders, decision-makers, and practitioners in the process of SI. The set indicates what problems an ALS faces in the form of resource supply risks and the ALS’s ability to successfully cope with such problems, i.e., how resilient it is to these supply risks. We apply the ALS criticality approach (ALSCA) to macronutrients in three different ALS types in the village cluster of Pontieba, Ioba Province, Burkina Faso. Two criti...
Phosphorus (P) is a key nutrient for food production. However, excess P use, e.g. in form of inorganic fertilizer application, can lead to environmental pollution, biodiversity losses and low profitability. Continuous cultivation with... more
Phosphorus (P) is a key nutrient for food production. However, excess P use, e.g. in form of inorganic fertilizer application, can lead to environmental pollution, biodiversity losses and low profitability. Continuous cultivation with underuse of P fertilizer results in low food productivity and soil degradation due to soil nutrient mining or soil erosion. The concern is most serious for smallholder farmers in developing countries whose food production and livelihood is tied directly to their access to and efficient use of P as key nutrient for plant growth. This paper introduces a multi-agent system modeling framework for assessing long-term impacts of integrated P nutrient management options on soil fertility, food productivity and profitability of smallholder agro-ecosystems in different geographic regions. We consider Vietnam’s smallholder systems in the Red River Delta (P overuse, market-oriented) and in the Northwest Mountain Region (P underuse, subsistence) as case examples f...
Global drylands face a host of urgent human and environmental challenges with far-reaching impacts. Improving smallholder agriculture remains a key development pathway to tackle these challenges. The dryland development paradigm (DDP),... more
Global drylands face a host of urgent human and environmental challenges with far-reaching impacts. Improving smallholder agriculture remains a key development pathway to tackle these challenges. The dryland development paradigm (DDP), introduced in 2007, presented a highly influential framework for dryland development based on systems research. This paper empirically derives a new, updated DDP. It assesses recent, cutting-edge dryland science, combining literature review with qualitative and quantitative analysis of research published by the world's largest dryland science and development research initiative. The new DDP comprises eight characteristics that are distilled into three integrative principles: Unpack, Traverse and Share. The new DDP is applied and tested to identify key dryland knowledge and development gaps. A future research agenda is then elucidated, grounded in a research in development approach, in which research anchored in the three integrative principles is ...
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Land degradation is a global problem affecting negatively the livelihoods and food security of billions of people, especially farmers and pastoralists in the developing countries. Eradicating extreme poverty without adequately addressing... more
Land degradation is a global problem affecting negatively the livelihoods and food security of billions of people, especially farmers and pastoralists in the developing countries. Eradicating extreme poverty without adequately addressing land degradation is highly unlikely. Given the importance and magnitude of the problem, there have been recurring efforts by the international community to identify the extent and severity of land degradation in global scale. As discussed in this paper, many previous studies were challenged by lack of appropriate data or shortcomings of their methodological approaches. In this paper, using global level remotely sensed vegetation index data, we identify the hotspots of land degradation in the world across major land cover types. In doing so, we use the long-term trend of inter-annual vegetation index as an indicator of biomass production decline or improvement. Besides the elimination of technical factors, confounding the relationship between the ind...
It is widely recognized that sustainable land management practices (SLM) are much needed for improving land-based livelihoods of 2.5 billion people living in the dry areas across the globe. Adoption and effectiveness of SLM depend on... more
It is widely recognized that sustainable land management practices (SLM) are much needed for improving land-based livelihoods of 2.5 billion people living in the dry areas across the globe. Adoption and effectiveness of SLM depend on specific contexts. The high contextual diversity over global drylands makes (1) uniform blanket policies promoting SLM less effective and (2) the synthesis and upscaling of site-based successful lessons difficult. We propose the functional context type (FCT) approach to overcome these challenges by grouping common biophysical, economic and social drivers of land use adoption and change into distinct context types that shape SLM adoption and resulting primary productivity and efficiencies. The drivers selected for analysis were based on a literature review. We identified and mapped context types using spatial cluster analysis with global data. The functionality of the derived context types were evaluated by unbalanced ANOVA that measured and tested the d...
Identifying patterns and drivers of regional land use changes is crucial for supporting land management and planning. Doing so for mountain ecosystems in East Asia, such as the So-yang River Basin in South Korea, has until now been a... more
Identifying patterns and drivers of regional land use changes is crucial for supporting land management and planning. Doing so for mountain ecosystems in East Asia, such as the So-yang River Basin in South Korea, has until now been a challenge because of extreme social and ecological complexities. Applying the techniques of geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical modeling via multinomial logistic regression (MNL), we attempted to examine various hypothesized drivers of land use changes, over the period 1980 to 2000. The hypothesized drivers included variables of topography, accessibility, spatial zoning policies and neighboring land use. Before the inferential statistic analyses, we identified the optimal neighborhood extents for each land use type. The two archetypical sub-periods, i.e. , 1980–1990 with agricultural expansions and 1990–2000 with reforestation, have similar causal drivers, such as topographic factors, which are related to characteristics of mountainous ...
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Mechanized raised-bed technology (MRBT) is recognized as an important measure to achieve higher crop productivity and water-use efficiency in intensive irrigated systems. Development efforts on spreading this technology require adequate... more
Mechanized raised-bed technology (MRBT) is recognized as an important measure to achieve higher crop productivity and water-use efficiency in intensive irrigated systems. Development efforts on spreading this technology require adequate understanding of the qualities and drivers of farmers’ adoption of MRBT. Research in agricultural innovation adoption has identified the importance of the socio-ecological context (SEC) that influences the livelihood of farmers adopting new technologies. This study introduces an agricultural livelihood systems (ALS) typology-based approach for guiding concrete analytical steps and statistical methods in evaluating the effects of system SEC diversity in two Egyptian governorates. We objectively classify a population of sampled farming households into a limited number of ALS types and use inferential statistics for the whole sampled population and individual ALS types to discover adoption drivers. Values added by the ALS approach confirm the widespread...
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Page 1. Zentrum für Entwicklungsforschung Center for Development Research University of Bonn ZEFBonn Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. Ecology and Development Series No. 29, 2005 Editor-in-Chief: Paul LGVlek Editors: Manfred ...
ABSTRACT
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Thiombiano, A.B., Le, Q.B., 2014. Support building resilient smallholder farms to climate change: I. Livelihood profile and nutrient management in the Loba province, Burkina Faso. In: Aenis, T., Knierim, A., Riecher, M.-C., Ridder, R., Schobert, H., Fischer, H. (Eds.), 11th European IFSA Symposiu...more
Climate change through increasing aridity disrupts nutrient cycles which are the basis of food production in agro ecosystems. Existing production systems in West Africa fail in maintaining a good enough nutrient cycling at farm level.... more
Climate change through increasing aridity disrupts nutrient cycles which are the basis of food production in agro ecosystems. Existing production systems in West Africa fail in maintaining a good enough nutrient cycling at farm level. Adaptation of smallholders to climate change requires rethinking and adjusting their existing production systems in order to improve their nutrient balance and to ensure an efficient provision of food demand. They need to be supported in this way with open decision-making tools (agent-based model) based on nutrient cycling and accounting for feedback loops. Adaptation capacities depend mainly on livelihood assets endowment. Our project in the Ioba province, starts by identifying livelihood profiles of smallholders and their link to the actual nutrient management. Three communities of the province were chosen through a cluster analysis using NDVI index, land use map, soil degradation information, and population density. Using soil map, six villages were...