Sustainable poverty alleviation at the intersection of agricultural dynamics and farmers decision making

With over 80% of the extremely poor being dependent on agriculture for their livelihood, alleviating poverty  while promoting sustainable agriculture is one of the imperatives for sustainable development.

Despite international efforts, the UN estimates that around 800 million people live in extreme poverty - a number that is likely to increase for another 71 million due to COVID-19 pandemics.

These changes are symbolic of the poverty traps - situations reinforced through feedback between social and ecological processes that keep people below threshold of well-being.

Farmers commonly face many constraints and opportunities and the decisions to balance them is a complex and dynamic process, often outside of standard economic assumptions of utility maximization.

Research and development, however, mostly consider single causes for complex issues and neglect farmers´ decision making as a contributing factor in shaping agrosystems’ dynamics.

We will question assumptions and expectations on how agricultural systems behave and identify possible outcomes of systems’ dynamics using a combination of narratives, modeling and stakeholders’ engagement.

The proposed research will identify opportunities to sustainably escape poverty traps by looking at the joint role of agricultural dynamics and farmers decision making. The project will open up possibility for desing and assessment of agricultural interventions and their trade-offs.