A systematic review of the methodology of trade-off analysis in agriculture.

Trade-off analysis (TOA) is central to policy and decision-making aimed at promoting sustainable agricultural landscapes. Yet, a generic methodological framework to assess trade-offs in agriculture is absent, largely due to the wide range of research disciplines and objectives for which TOA is used. In this study, we systematically reviewed 119 studies that have implemented TOAs in landscapes and regions dominated by agricultural systems around the world. Our results highlight that TOAs tend to be unbalanced, with a strong emphasis on productivity rather than environmental and socio-cultural services. TOAs have mostly been performed at farm or regional scales, rarely considering multiple spatial scales simultaneously. Mostly, TOAs fail to include stakeholders at study development stage, disregard recommendation uncertainty due to outcome variability and overlook risks associated with the TOA outcomes. Increased attention to these aspects is critical for TOAs to guide agricultural landscapes towards sustainability.

Pesticide Use Practices in Root, Tuber, and Banana Crops by Smallholder Farmers in Rwanda and Burundi.

Misuse and poor handling of chemical pesticides in agriculture is hazardous to the health of farmers, consumers, and to the environment. We studied the pest and disease management practices and the type of pesticides used in four root, tuber, and banana (RTB) crops in Rwanda and Burundi through in-depth interviews with a total of 811 smallholder farmers. No chemical pesticides were used in banana in either Rwanda and Burundi, whereas the use of insecticides and fungicides in potato was quite frequent. Nearly all insecticides and about one third of the fungicides used are moderately hazardous. Personal protective equipment was used by less than a half of the interviewed farmers in both countries. Reported cases of death due to self- or accidental-poisoning among humans and domestic animals in the previous 12 months were substantial in both countries. Training of farmers and agrochemical retailers in safe use of pesticide and handling and, use of integrated pest management approaches to reduce pest and disease damage is recommended.

Comparing modeling approaches for assessing priorities in international agricultural research.

This article examines how the estimated impacts of crop technologies vary with alternate methods and assumptions, and also discusses the implications of these differences for the design of studies to inform research prioritization. Drawing on international potato research, we show how foresight scenarios, realized by a multi-period global multi-commodity equilibrium model, can affect the estimated magnitudes of welfare impacts and the ranking of different potato research options, as opposed to the static, single-commodity, and country assumptions of the economic surplus model which is commonly used in priority setting studies. Our results suggestthatthe ranking oftechnolo- gies is driven by the data used for their specification and is not affected by the foresight scenario examined. However, net benefits vary significantly in each scenario and are greatly overestimated when impacts on non-target countries are ignored. We also argue that the validity of the singlecommodity assumption underpinning the economic surplus model is case-specific and depends on the interventions examined and on the objectives and criteria included in a priority setting study.