FSC in dialog: Global integrated bio-economic modeling

September 16, 2013

The topic “Global integrated bio-economic modeling - A toolkit for the assessment of priorities for international agricultural research” was presented and discussed on September 16 by Ulrich Kleinwechter from the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru.
Growing demand for agricultural products, rising and volatile food prices, increasing pressure on natural resources and climate change bring about substantial challenges for agriculture in the developing world. While the recognition of these challenges has led to an increasing demand for international agricultural research and the development of improved agricultural technologies, agricultural research for development still takes place in a context of limited availability of resources.
This makes it necessary to identify and prioritize those options for research which promise to have the highest impacts for poverty reduction and food security. Integrated bio-economic modeling which combines approaches of virtual crop modeling with agricultural sector modeling provides a tool for such assessments, capturing effects of crop genetic improvement under alternative scenarios of socio-economic development and climate change.
An application to improved potato varieties for Sub-Saharan Africa highlights the merits of the approach, namely its comprehensiveness, the broad spatial and temporal coverage and the capability of capturing complex interactions in the bio-economic systems under consideration, but also points to a number of potential limitations.