Nouvelles

In February, Wageningen University (WUR) was the host of a CGIAR event that shed light on trade-offs in agricultural systems. These trade-offs arise as we strive to achieve greater food security while also dealing with an increasing population, limited resources, a changing climate, and environmental degradation.

The workshop was aimed at understanding system dynamics, tipping points and shocks, and the resulting trade-offs and synergies across temporal and spatial scales. During the workshop, some 30 scientists currently engaged in different CGIAR research programs came together to share lessons learned from their experiences working with the tools available for assessing these trade-offs.

Researchers also discussed how to challenge underlying assumptions and expected outcomes, with Ken Giller, professor of Plant Production Systems at WUR, posing the question: can research really lift people out of poverty or can we at best hope to reduce hunger? “We should often be talking more about alleviating hunger rather than lifting farmers out of poverty,” he said.

"There was no institutional agenda, but genuine open brainstorming about the strengths and weaknesses of our approaches and assumptions at a time that the CGIAR is embracing system analysis,” said Philip Thornton, who is the CCAFS Theme Leader on Data and Tools research, which provided funding support. “People had to cover their own participation costs, but we still had trouble keeping the event small”, said Lotte Klapwijk, the lead consultant from International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and WUR, who helped organise the event.

Bridging theory and reality

"The theoretical models used to quantify trade-offs often oversimplify complex issues and are unable to account for certain factors such as human preferences or unexpected crises. This is especially true when trying to scale up models from farm level to regional or global scales," said Jetse Stoorvogel, of the Soil Geography and Landscape group at WUR.

Dave Harris, a principal scientist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), based in Nairobi, highlighted that most small scale farmers often rely on off-farm employment, as earnings derived from farming are insufficient to satisfy their needs. Hence, rather than focusing on farming systems, he argues that livelihood systems should be the main focal point of analysis. He suggests that extending the system boundaries to include the whole context of rural livelihoods, rather than seeing them solely as farmers, would allow a better understanding of what affects decision making, which could be key to developing a better grasp of agricultural trade-offs.

Another difficulty lies in how to communicate the results of these models to the principal stakeholders, namely farmers, extension workers, policy makers, and other researchers. On the one hand, combining biophysical and economic models can show the boundaries within which different technological options can work, so that these models provide us with the quantitative data that is important for policy making. However, at the same time, Pablo Tittonell, professor of Farming Systems Ecology at WUR, suggested such models "can and should be used to favour discussions about possible solutions rather than dictating a single possible option." Scenarios that outline different plausible future pathways of economic development offer a powerful tool for providing context for models at different scales and for communicating information about a highly uncertain future to a wide range of stakeholders.

"Achieving impact depends on how researchers articulate the realities of agricultural practices and policies” said by Todd Crane, from WUR. Together with Javier Ekboir from the CGIAR Institutional Learning and Change (ILAC) initiative, they challenged the researchers on their assumptions and vision of impact. Javier observed that “major historical changes were often not gradual and incremental, but rapid and caused by shocks, tipping points, and technological opportunities that we did not foresee.”

“We have to think carefully about our theory of change, but may also need a regular change of theory” said Meine van Noordwijk, of the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF).

A total of ten CGIAR institutes and eight CRPs were represented at the IITA initiated event. It was great to see such a gathering of intellect and enthusiasm. The participants concluded that there was a need to meet again in one or two years to report on their findings and progress on systems analysis and their new ‘research in development’, as opposed to ‘research for development’.

Piet van Asten is a Systems Agronomist and the CCAFS Contact Point at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture. If you would like to find out more about CCAFS' research into data and tools, click here. If you are interested in reading about CCAFS' research linking knowledge to action, click here.