AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, BUSINESS CONCEPTS AND TEACHING Maria
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AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, BUSINESS CONCEPTS AND TEACHING Maria Alebaki
Transcript of AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, BUSINESS CONCEPTS AND TEACHING Maria
AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, BUSINESS CONCEPTS AND TEACHING
Maria Alebaki
Aldo Leopold (1887–1948)
Who has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf?
Outline
The ‘Systems thinking’ approach
The ‘Farming as a Business’ concept
Agriculture and agricultural science: The importance of holistic learning
Summary - Revision activities
The whole is more than the sum of its parts
Ludwig von Bertalanffy(1901 - 1972)
Systems thinking
Origins: NASA era (1950s)
Shoup (2005)
What is a system?
Elnashaie et al. (2013); McConnell & Dillon (1997); Shoup (2005)
Objective
Boundary
A specified group of components/ functions/processes
General systems classification
Artificial
Natural
Social
FAO (1997)
• Individuals, groups, communities, Institutions
• Exist in nature
• Designed by people• Constructed from elements taken from natural and/or social systems
Examples of natural systems
Ecosystem:
A community of living organisms in conjunction with the non-livingcomponents of their environment.
Examples of social systemsFAO (1997); Valentinov (2005)
Examples of artificial systems
Further sub-classification
Elnashaie et al. (2013); Dillon (1992); FAO (1997)
Closed or Open
Greenhouse lettuce farm Outdoor lettuce farm
Implicit or Explicit
Measuring the exact amounts of nutrients
Less strict measurement
Static or Dynamic
Tends to stay the same or changes
Which category does agriculture fall into?
Agriculture is…
A human managed ecosystem
Specialized and controlled
Designed for the production of agricultural products
Defining boundaries: Farm system level
The farm business
Dairy enterpriseMaize
SoyaChicken unit
........
Gietema (2006)
Several farm enterprises
Defining boundaries:Village/community system level
Defining boundaries: A system of systems
Hierarchy of Agricultural Systems
Crop/animal system (enterprise)
Village - community system
Sub-Sector (Production, Credit, Extension)
FAO (1997)
All crop/animal system (farm)
Industry (Wheat, Coffee, Dairy)
Sector (All Agriculture)
The commercial farming environment
Farming for food Farming for cash
Some decades ago
Today
Look at the farm more as a business than as a source of food
FAO (2011)
labour
capital
seeds
animals
fertilizers
pesticides
ploughing
sowing
spraying
adding fertilizer
harvesting
grazing
milking
maize
wheat
potatoes
seeds
crop waste
milk
wool
eggs
Other products (fiber, biofuel)
Purpose
Inputs Outputs
Resources/ Inputs
Processes Products/ Outputs
Boardworks (2004)
Farming as a business
Farm (production unit) Market
Today's farmers face a multitude of challenges
Weather extremes
Unpredictable farming
conditionsDiseases
Longer growing seasons
Market access/Price volatility
FAO (2015); Glithero et al (2013); Harvey et al (2011); Sanyal (2014)
The growth of world population 1700-2012 Piketty (2014)
600 million
7 billion
3.7 billion
Modern Agriculture and Sustainability
“We as a society must have felt that the Agricultural System as it now exists is not sustainable…”
Johnson (1994) In: Debertin &
Pagoulatos (2015)
“Agriculture, in its present form, is not sustainable…”
Bawden (2005)
Ashley Cecil (2008). Credit: Piotr Fajfer / Oxfam International
Sustainable/Adaptation strategies
Knowledge-intensive
Inputs-intensive
Agricultural systems are forced to function under greater levels of perturbation.
Cochrane (1958); Lin (2011); von Witzke (2013); Zaccai (2012). Picture: The inspiration room
What is Resilience?
From the Latin resiliere (re-’back’ + saliire ‘to jump’)
Brand & Jax (2007); Olsson et al (2014); Oxford Dictionaries (2014); Walker & Salt (2006)
Many definitions from different perspectives
to return to a pre-existing state after being stressed
Engineering to maintain current equilibrium state after a perturbation
Ecological
to recreate in order to adapt successfully in an ever-changing environment
Social entities’ ability to cope with external stresses and disturbances
Sociological(Transformability)
Evolutionary
Common elements in defining Resilience
Context
Resilience of what?
Disturbance
Shock or Stress?
Capacity
Reactionto
disturbance
• Bounce back
• Recover
• CollapseAbson et al. (2013); DFID (2011)
System’s Capacity
Resilience as Transformability: An Example from Latin America
1970s: Land degradation
Farmers started experimenting with low-till alternatives to plowing
Soil organic matter and fertility
Currently: >25 million ha under no-tillage in Brazil alone.
‘Agrarian revolution’ or ‘Social–ecological transformation’.
www.pacd.org
U.S. Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Derpsch & Friedrich (2009); Folke et al (2010); Fowler & Rockström (2001).
Several questions arise…
United Nations (2013)
1• In which ways has agriculture
responded to various crises?
2
• To what extent are systems capable to confront future shocks?
3• How resilient is a particular
system to external stresses?
The farm business cycleFAO (2011)
What is wrong?What more can be done?
Looking into the future
Can the plan be realized?
Taking a longerlook at what you have done
1. Diagnosis and finding opportunities
2. Planning
3. Implementing
4. Evaluating
Marketing Monitoring Producing Organizing
(keeping track of progress)
(arranging the resources/people)
So why is it so important?
Scientists and managers of tomorrow need to know
There are three classes of people:
Those who do not see.
Those who see when they are shown.
Those who see.
Portrait by Francesco Melzi
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Learn how to see: Need for an integrated (systems) approach
Kalaugher et al (2013)
Students as future agricultural scientists
Students
Farm Management
Specialists
Business service providers
Policy makers Academics Researchers
Farm managers
Providing support at all levels of agricultural extension
Agricultural Science is a broad multidisciplinary field
Kahan (2013)
Applying scientific knowledge to agricultural practices
Further reading (1)
Darnhofer, I., Gibbon, D. & Dedieu, B. (Eds.) (2012). Farming SystemsResearch into the 21st Century: The New Dynamic. Dordrecht: Springer,490 pp.
FAO (2011). Farm Business School handbook: Training of farmersprogramme for South Asia. Regional Office for Asia and the PacificBangkok.
Glithero, N., Ramsden, S.J. and Wilson, P. (2013). Farm systemsassessment of bioenergy feedstock production: Integrating Bio-economicmodels and Life Cycle Analysis approaches Agricultural Systems. 109, 53-64.
Folke, C., Carpenter, S. R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Chapin, T. &Rockström, J. (2010). Resilience thinking: Integrating resilience,adaptability and transformability. Ecology and Society, 15 (4): 20-28.
Kahan, D. (2013). The Role of the Farm Management Specialist inExtension (Farm Management Extension Guide). Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations, Rome.
Further reading (2)
Kalaugher, E., Bornman J.F., Clark, A. & Beukes, P. (2013). An integratedbiophysical and socio-economic framework for analysis of climate changeadaptation strategies: the case of a New Zealand dairy farming system.Environmental Modelling & Software, 39, 176–187.
Koutsouris (2009). Sustainability, Crossdisciplinarity and HigherEducation--From an Agronomic Point of View. US-China Education Review,6 (3): 13-27.
Smith, H.F. & Sullivan, C.A. (2014). Ecosystem services within agriculturallandscapes: farmers' perceptions. Ecological Economics, 98 (1): 72-80.
Wilson, P., Harpur, N. & Darling, R. (2013). Explaining variation in farmand farm business performance in respect to farmer behaviouralsegmentation analysis: implications for land use policies. Land Use Policy,30(1), 147-156
