Different ways to cut a cake: Comparing expert-based and statistical typologies to target sustainable intensification technologies, a case-study in Southern Ethiopia

David Berre (), Frédéric Baudron (), Menale Kassie, Peter Craufurd and Santiago Lopez-Ridaura
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David Berre: UPR AIDA - Agroécologie et intensification durables des cultures annuelles - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement
Frédéric Baudron: CIMMYT - Centre international d'amélioration du maïs et du blé
Menale Kassie: CIMMYT - Centre international d'amélioration du maïs et du blé
Peter Craufurd: CIMMYT - Centre international d'amélioration du maïs et du blé
Santiago Lopez-Ridaura: CIMMYT - Centre international d'amélioration du maïs et du blé

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Abstract: Understanding farm diversity is essential to delineate recommendation domains for new technologies, but diversity is a subjective concept, and can be described differently depending on the way it is perceived. Historically, new technologies have been targeted primarily based on agro-ecological conditions, largely ignoring socioeconomic conditions. Based on 273 farm households' surveys in Ethiopia, we compare two approaches for the delineation of farm type recommendation domains for crop and livestock technologies: one based on expert knowledge and one based on statistical methods. The expert-based typology used a simple discriminant key for stakeholders in the field to define four farm types based on Tropical Livestock Unit, total cultivated surface and the ratio of these two indicators. This simple key took only a few minutes to make inferences about the potential of adoption of crop and livestock technologies. The PCA-HC analysis included a greater number of variables describing the farm (land use, household size, cattle, fertilizer, off-farm work, hiring labour, production). This analysis emphasized the multi-dimensional potential of such a statistical approach and, in principle, its usefulness to grasp the full complexity of farming systems to identify their needs in crop and livestock technologies. A sub-sampling approach was used to test the impact of data selection on the diversity represented in the statistical approach. Our results show that diversity structure is significantly impacted according to the choice of a sub-sample of 15 of the 20 variables available. This paper shows the complementarity of the two approaches and demonstrates the influence of data selection within large baseline data sets on the total diversity represented in the clusters identified.

Keywords: Éthiopie; Typologie; Ethiopia; Cluster; Sustainable intensification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05173448v1
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Published in Experimental Agriculture, 2019, 55 (n.spéc. S.1. The options by context approach: A paradigm shift in agronomy), pp.191-207. ⟨10.1017/S0014479716000727⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05173448

DOI: 10.1017/S0014479716000727

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