Presented by Mirja Michalscheck at the Tropentag 2019: Filling Gaps and Removing Traps for Sustainable Resource Management, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany, 18–20 September 2019

1. Exploring smallholder farm decisions
through typologies and serious gaming
Mirja Michalscheck
Wageningen University & Research
Tropentag 2019
20 September 2019, Kassel, Germany

2. More productive ß adoption of technologies & techniques
Adoption = Decision
How does a farm-level decision come about?
Natural Resource-level Management-level
Natural Resources Management (NRM)
community
household
individual
landscape
farm
field
Smallholders: 83%

3. Household types
Farm (households) differ!
Statistics
PCA, CA
DATA
multivariate
Individuals!
Household composition

4. Gender norms

5. Household types and composition
Low Resource Endowed
Medium Resource Endowed
High Resource Endowed

6. Decision-making dynamics: social physics

7. Serious game: Simulate a negotiation

8. Men – Women – Oldest Son

9. Negotiation - Evaluation

10. HHHs
70%
wives
15%
sons
15%
Power: used, overruled, withheld
Interests and power distribution per farm type

11. Key findings
• Farm and farmer typology: new insights!
• Complex systems: meaningful patterns
• Pathway ‘out of poverty’: many steps,
many people
• Non-adoption might be the best choice for
a farmer.
Explore: higher-levels
Responsible scaling!
Youth in agriculture!

12. Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation
africa-rising.net
This presentation is licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence.