PROJECT ASSESSMENTS - Science for Agriculture and Rural Development in Low-income Countries - page 173

models, and other component models (e.g., expert systems to quantify input-output
relations of various current and future alternative production activities)). A related
innovation is, that the design and evaluation of this framework has been carried out
jointly with local stakeholder platforms in four different regions.
IRMLA has put emphasis on communication of results to both the scientific
community and to regional stakeholders (including provincial and national planners
and policymakers).
A considerable number of international journal /peer-reviewed papers have been
published and many more are in press (a special issue of Agricultural Systems is in
the making), submitted or completed; moreover, the project produced several tech-
nical reports, six project reports, international workshop proceedings, posters and
newsletters - most of these are available from the project site: www.irmla.alterra.nl
Operational tools (Linear Programming (LP) models and technical coefficient gene-
rators) have been made available via internet.
2) What are policy-relevant findings of the project for Dutch and for Southern
policymakers?
Example: Pujiang, Zhejiang Province
Scenarios
Recently, FAO proposed five main strategies to reduce hunger and poverty and to
improve the livelihoods of farm households: (i) intensification of existing production
systems, i.e., increasing factor productivity through greater use of external inputs per
unit area or per animal, (ii) diversification of production and processing, i.e., the
allocation of production resources among different income-generating activities, (iii)
expansion of land holding or herd size, (iv) increasing off-farm income, both agri-
cultural and non-agricultural, and (v) complete exit from the agricultural sector. For
Pujiang, we have defined four scenarios, in addition to a reference scenario repre-
senting the current situation that is used as a benchmark for the results of the other
scenarios. The four scenarios refer to the first three poverty reduction strategies,
while the fourth scenario combines the last two poverty reduction strategies. The
strategies to increase off-farm income and to exit from agriculture are to a certain
extent interrelated as both depend on the generation of employment opportunities
outside the agricultural sector.
Results
Results of the reference and the four alternative future scenarios for Pujiang are
presented in Table 1. Similar scenario analyses, tailored to the goals and aspirations
of stakeholders have been performed for the three other case studies (Omon and
Tam Duong in Vietnam and Dingras in the Philippines).
Intensification Land use allocation in this scenario is not different from the reference
scenario (Table 1). However, land use activities with improved nutrient recoveries