Agricultural futures in the humid tropics:
A multi-scale approach
International Conference on Integrated Systems –
Systems Research for Sustainable Intensification in Smallholder Agriculture
IITA Headquarters in Ibadan, Nigeria, 3-6 March 2015
Randall Ritzema (on behalf of Tim Robinson)

Contributors
• Timothy Robinson (ILRI)
• Nils Teufel (ILRI)
• Ingrid Öborn (ICRAF)
• Mark van Wijk (ILRI)
• Randall Ritzema (ILRI)
• Robin Bourgeois (GFAR)
• Keith Wiebe (IFPRI)
• Mark Lundy (CIAT)
• Cees Leeuwis (WUR)
• Iddo Dror (ILRI)

Overview
• The global agricultural sector
• Three ways to consider the
future
•Projections
•Systems analysis
•Community foresight
• Proposed project
• Some challenges

The global agricultural sector
Health
and
nutrition
Equity and
growth
Climate
and natural
resource
use
Agricultural
production

The global agricultural sectorPoliciesandinstitutional
change
Economi
c growth
Trade&marketing
Changing
diets
Energy prices
Agricultural
production Health
and
nutrition
Equity and
growth
Climate
and natural
resource
use

Surface temperature projections
Source: IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report

World population projection (UN 2012)
Source: Gerland et al. 2014
Year
Totalpopulation(billions)
7 Billion
9.5 Billion
11 Billion

Continental population projection
Source: Gerland et al. 2014
Year
Totalpopulation(billions)

Urbanisation
Projections
-
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
60,000
70,000
80,000
90,000
Humanpopulationinthousands
Urban
Rural
Population growth and urbanisation in Kenya

A Multi-Scale Issue
• These global/regional drivers influence the
constraints and opportunities at the farm household
level, both now and in the future
• Drivers across scales produce complex effects
• A multi-scale and multi-disciplinary, and multi-
perspective approach is needed to address the
complexity, and to move understanding toward
action.
• Proposed Humidtropics project

Project aims
•Focus on two contrasting action
sites in the humid tropics
•Assess potential futures in these
sites from 3 perspectives
•Work with R4D platforms to
propose interventions to steer
those communities and systems
along a plausible and sustainable
development pathways

Contemplating the future: 3 perspectives
•Projections- exploring the ‘context of change’
• Global/regional drivers
• Based on standard future ‘scenarios’
• Typically 20-80 years into the future
• e.g. IMPACT, GLOBIUM, FAO projections
•Systems analysis- using household survey data to explore the
impact of different scenarios on livelihoods
• e.g. IMPACT-lite surveys
• Typically to 10-15 years into the future
•Community foresight- discussing with communities what
aspirations, expectations, and concerns they have of the future
• Typically to 5-10 years into the future
• e.g. GFAR approach

Projections
•Based on different pathways
of economic development
•Changing climates
•surface temperatures
•rainfall
•extreme weather events
•Changing demographics
•population
•urbanisation
•migration
•Provides long-term context
Emissions Scenarios
RCP2.6: Mitigation scenario leading
to a very low forcing level
CO2 reaches 421 ppm by 2100
RCP4.5: Stabilization scenario
(forcing stabilized by 2100)
CO2 reaches 538 ppm by 2100
RCP6: Stabilization scenario
(forcing does not stabilize by 2100)
CO2 reaches 670 ppm by 2100
RCP8.5: Very high GHG emissions
scenario
CO2 reaches 936 ppm by 2100
Will growing periods be suitable in
30 years for certain crops?

Projections
•East Africa Strategic Futures -
Food Security, the
Environment and Livelihoods
•Exploring the future(s) of
South East Asia: Four
scenarios for agriculture and
food security, livelihoods and
environments
Regional, as well as global,
projections to inform local
conditions:

Systems analysis
• Various model types- incorporating time
• Trade-off Analysis
• Optimisation
• Systems Dynamics
• Some key contributions of systems analysis:
• Clearer understanding of the ‘solution
space’ for action site populations
• What are estimates of best-bet options?
• What’s plausible?
• Enables linkages and comparisons between
scales, sites, and systems
• Parameterization based on
global/regional drivers

Systems analysis
• Quantitative, allows for
• consideration of magnitudes, relevance and
priorities
• specified goals and objectives
• Ex-ante scenarios provide
• testing of change mechanisms and
magnitude
• sensitivity analysis of context constraints
• comparison of effects on households and
household types
• longer-term perspective through dynamic
formulation
• Based on primary household data
• enables understanding of variation within
action site population
e.g. will land availability
constrain agricultural
production in 20 years?

Types of output
•Illustrates diversity between
households
• possible development pathways of
population groups
• targeting of interventions
•Assesses interventions
• estimating household effects
(over a number of years)
• determining sensitivity to context
(considering general development
trends)
• prioritising interventions
(in view of changing contexts)
Source: Herrero et al. (2014)
Projections of land size and labour price
for three case studies (2005-2025)
Landsize(ha)Labourprice(€perha)
Year

Sources: Van Wijk et al. (in prep); Ritzema et al. (in prep); Frelat et al. (in prep)
Tanzania: Food Security ratio
Types of output
For whole farm populations, how
these potential changes together with
potential interventions can lead to
changes in the importance of
different on and off farm activities
Crop Boost
Livestock Boost
Off-farm Boost
ChangeinFoodSecurityRatio Food Security Ratio categories

Community foresight
Explore people’s short-term (5-10 years)
aspirations and concerns – community
visioning
What constraints are affecting the
achievement of desirable outcomes?
Which are the opportunities to build on?
What actions does the community need to take
to reach aspirations?
What are the externally-driven changes that
the community need to adapt to (e.g.
climate change)?
How can the interventions address the
aspirations, constraints and opportunities?

Visioning and scenario
development with the R4D platforms
• Start from the global and regional scenarios and major change
factors
• Scenario development workshop for the action site (2030 and
2050)
• Use systems analysis results to enhance projections of the
effects of innovations, including the identified and
implemented interventions
• ‘Half-way’ feed-back to the R4D platform, continue analysis,
‘final’ feed back to R4D platform
• Organize a larger action site stakeholder workshop including
policy makers, different public and private sectors, etc.

Some challenges
How will the three approaches come together…
• Projections will set the broad scene: How are markets
changing? How are growing conditions changing? etc.
• Systems analysis will set the boundaries for change
and model plausible futures
• Community foresight will explore the hopes, concerns
and expectations of the communities themselves
… to be maximally effectively in informing the R4D
platform, to produce (through facilitated
discussions) a set of recommendations that will
lead to desirable outcomes, within the bounds of
plausibility, in the context of broader, on-going
drivers and changes