What do farmers think about climate?

Andrés Barsky, an Argentine geographer collaborating in the project, conducted interviews with 60 AACREA farmers in the two study regions (north of Buenos Aires and north of Córdoba). The goal was to assess (a) what farmers knew about climate of their region, (b) what they did not know, and (c ) what they thought they knew, but was not correct.

As a result of these interviews, a series of knowledge gaps and misunderstandings were identified. These gaps were addressed in an article titled “Cómo hacer del pronóstico climático una herramienta útil” [How to turn a climate forecast into a useful tool], published in the  April 2008 issue of the AACREA magazine.

>> See full text of article (PDF, 1644 KB)

Mike North visits Buenos Aires

During March 7-12, 2008, Dr. Mike North visited Buenos Aires to interact with Argentine project participants. Mike is Deputy Director of the Center for Complex Adaptive Agent Systems Simulation at Argonne National Laboratory, and an expert in design and implementation of agent-based models.

Topics discussed during the visit included (a) ABM coding standards, (b) validation of ABMs, (c) evolution towards a full land rental market (currently the model includes an exogenous rental price).

During his visit to Buenos Aires, Mike had a chance to sample Argentine gastronomy.

Geographer will investigate agricultural technology adoption

Carolina Favre is a new member of the project team. Trained as a geographer at the University of Buenos Aires, she will explore historical patterns of adoption of agricultural innovations.

Carolina will focus on the adoption of Bt maize, a variant of maize, genetically altered to express the bacterial Bt toxin, which is poisonous to insect pests. In the case of maize, the pest is the European Corn Borer.  The European corn borer, Ostrinia nubilalis, destroys corn crops by burrowing into the stem, causing the plant to fall over.

Undergraduate Engineering student joins the team

Santiago Rovere, a student at the University of Buenos Aires' School of Engineering has joined the research team. Santiago will do research for his undergraduate thesis on the diffusion of technical innovations through social networks. Santiago expects to complete his thesis in early 2009.

As Santiago is an experienced Java programmer, he will also participate in the implementation of the project's agent-based model of Argentine agricultural production systems.

What is this blog?

This blog provides information about a research project to understand and model the dynamic interactions of natural and human components in agricultural ecosystems. The focus is on agricultural production systems in the Pampas of central-eastern Argentina. The Pampas are one of the major cereal and oilseed production areas of the world.

The project places special emphasis on assessing the scope for active adaptive management in response to new knowledge such as climate information and insights on human decision-making. Highlights of the project include:

• A strong focus on understanding the dynamics of human behavior and decisions in the context of a real-world complex natural/human system;
• A diverse and well-balanced team of investigators and outreach specialists from the United States and Argentina that draws equally from a range of disciplines; and
• The active involvement of farmers and operational producers of climate information who ensure the relevance of the research and stakeholders’ ownership of the process.