Browsing by Author "Daniel Rodriguez"

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    Systems Modelling Approaches to the Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture
    (Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Pertanian, 2013) Daniel Rodriguez
    The sustainable intensification of food production at both sides of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) split face different though equally challenging and complex problems and opportunities, requiring new science and tools. In one case, the limited availability of resources (e.g. land, finance, labour), lack of access to input and product markets, infrastructure, constrain the opportunities and incentives smallholder farmers have to change and improve their production systems. On the other hand, farmers in the developed world are reaching the point where further improvement of their production systems becomes uneconomical, too risky (Sadras and Rodriguez 2010), or inconsistent with environmental outcomes. This is taking place in a world where the number of hungry people reached record levels in 2009. Despite a slight recovery in 2010, the number of hungry people remains far higher than the level that existed when a hunger-reduction target was agreed at the World Food Summit in 1996. Even though the challenges are significant we should be able to feed 9 billion people by 2050. Evidence for this can be found in the fact that over the last 50 years the increase in agricultural production fed an additional 4 billion people with only an 11% increase in land area. More recent examples of considerable transformations in food and fibre production can be found in the sustainable intensification of broad acre agriculture in Brazil; in the generation of incentives through the introduction of changes in land ownership in Vietnam; and in the introduction of smart subsidies on agricultural inputs in Malawi. Nowadays Brazil is leading the world as a global net food exporter; small-holder farmers from Vietnam are increasingly accessing international markets; and Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, exports maize to neighbouring countries. Even though small, these are significant examples of the potential from adopting the right technologies and policies required to generate incentives, opportunities and economic growth from agriculture. Reducing food insecurities and poverty around the globe will require a high level of pragmatism to identify best fit intervention that solve inefficiencies, close yield gaps, and sustainably increase farmers’ profits, on nearly the same area of land, and (mostly) using farmers’ own resources (Rodriguez and Sadras 2011). In this paper we propose that high farm productivity is the result of the best combination of management variables that influence the yield of individual crops in individual fields, and the way limited resources e.g. labour, land, finances, are allocated across enterprises and fields at the whole-farm level (Rodriguez et al. 2009 and 2011; Power et al. 2011). Here, we also propose that irrespective of the intensity and scale of the production system, the design of more productive, profitable and sustainable farming systems, will require more integrative approaches based on basic crop eco-physiological principles, that account for local constraints on resources, socio-economic, and value chain factors.