Impact of Agricultural Innovation
Attributes
Medium: Land
Country: Vietnam
Analytical Framework(s): Other
Study Date: 2009
Publication Date: 2010
Major Result(s)
Study Note: The overall objective of this study is to explore how innovations can contribute to both sustainable agriculture and the economic wellbeing of farm households in the upland regions of Vietnam. Specifically, it aimed to identify the determinants of innovation diffusion in upland agriculture of northern Vietnam through analyzing the diffusion paths of previously introduced innovations; to develop and calibrate an integrated land use model for upland agriculture based on MP-MAS and to ex-ante evaluate innovations developed within The Uplands Program; to explore the impacts of the diffusion of various agricultural innovations on environmental quality (sustainability) and the economic wellbeing of farm households; and to identify what policy measures would be needed to ensure that these agricultural innovations contribute to sustainability and wellbeing.
Study Details
Summary: The government of Vietnam, together with several international organizations, has disseminated various innovations in agriculture throughout the northern uplands of Vietnam, without taking into account soil erosion, which negatively affects the sustainability of both the natural environment and human livelihoods. Using Mathematical Programming-based Multi-Agent Systems (MP-MAS), an agent-based simulation model, this study assesses the impacts of the agricultural innovations on soil nutrients and soil erosion as well as on the income of local farm households. It develops a possible conservation policy and measures the trade-off between soil conservation and household income if the featured policy were to be implemented. The results show that growing maize and cassava cause a large quantity of long-term soil nutrient loss. A land tax policy can be applied to reduce the amount of soil loss. Nevertheless, it is recommended that agricultural innovations in animal husbandry should be identified and disseminated to compensate for the loss of household income when the government applies a strict soil conservation policy. Additionally, the determinants for propagation of agricultural innovations are identified by ordered logit regression model to provide the indicators of early adopters for extension workers so that they can perform the dissemination work more appropriately.
Site Characteristics: The Northwest of Vietnam has a high share of ethnic minority people who are engaged in farming but are relatively disadvantaged in terms of access to markets, government institutions, and infrastructure. The Northwest of Vietnam also has the highest poverty rate in Vietnam. Agricultural research in Vietnam has traditionally focused on the highly productive lowland agriculture that meets the demands of most of the food supply and agricultural export. Mountainous areas are relatively underresearched, which is the reason why the University of Hohenheim and several Vietnamese universities selected this area for their research in the year 2000.
Comments: To assess the potential impact of innovations on the wellbeing of farm households as well as the sustainability of the ecosystem, a Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) model was used. MAS models of land-use/cover change (MAS/LUCC) couple a cellular component that represents a landscape with an agent-based component that represents human decision-making. MAS/LUCC models have been applied in a wide range of settings yet have in common that agents are autonomous decision-makers who interact and communicate and make decisions that can alter the environment. MAS/LUCC applications have been based on various software platforms; the most popular ones being Cormas, NetLogo, RePast, and Swarm. The present study uses a platform called MP-MAS, which stands for Mathematical Programming-based Multi-Agent Systems (MP-MAS) and is a freeware software application developed at the University of Hohenheim.