{"title":"Landscape, welfare, and distributional trade-offs from smallholder agroforestry contracting: An agent-based model approach","authors":"Daniel Hill, Oscar Cacho, Jonathan Moss","doi":"10.1016/j.agsy.2025.104493","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>CONTEXT</h3><div>Agroforestry value chains have been extensively promoted as potential ‘win-win’ vehicles for Sustainable Intensification in tropical upland landscapes. Coffee contract farming in particular can support landscape environmental policy objectives through improvements in soil erosion and biomass carbon, while also providing smallholders with higher agricultural profits.</div></div><div><h3>OBJECTIVE</h3><div>This paper explores the extent in which coffee agroforestry contract farming influences household welfare and landscape environmental outcomes using a case study of the peri-urban uplands of Bandung, Indonesia.</div></div><div><h3>METHODS</h3><div>We develop an agent-based simulation model to test the welfare and landscape effects of coffee contracting interventions. The model incorporates household survey data with granular land cover and soil maps. Smallholder farmer agents interact with coffee value chains and other agricultural and labour markets, and make land use decisions that have landscape-level environmental and household welfare implications.</div></div><div><h3>RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS</h3><div>The modelling simulations show that coffee contracting can achieve improved incomes for farmers, and increased agroforestry landcover. However, transaction costs can impede many households from accessing contract coffee markets, resulting in trade-offs between higher incomes and increasing rural income inequality. Contract coffee displaces lower-input agroforestry where opportunity costs are low, resulting in significant landscape declines in biomass carbon and increases in soil erosion – an outcome akin to a Jevon's Paradox.</div></div><div><h3>SIGNIFICANCE</h3><div>Agroforestry value chain interventions deliver trade-offs when seeking to address multiple and complex landscape challenges. Complementary non-market interventions that better align smallholder incentives with environmental policy objectives are necessary for these value chain interventions to be effective tools for Sustainable Intensification.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":7730,"journal":{"name":"Agricultural Systems","volume":"230 ","pages":"Article 104493"},"PeriodicalIF":6.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Agricultural Systems","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X25002331","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"农林科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURE, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
CONTEXT
Agroforestry value chains have been extensively promoted as potential ‘win-win’ vehicles for Sustainable Intensification in tropical upland landscapes. Coffee contract farming in particular can support landscape environmental policy objectives through improvements in soil erosion and biomass carbon, while also providing smallholders with higher agricultural profits.
OBJECTIVE
This paper explores the extent in which coffee agroforestry contract farming influences household welfare and landscape environmental outcomes using a case study of the peri-urban uplands of Bandung, Indonesia.
METHODS
We develop an agent-based simulation model to test the welfare and landscape effects of coffee contracting interventions. The model incorporates household survey data with granular land cover and soil maps. Smallholder farmer agents interact with coffee value chains and other agricultural and labour markets, and make land use decisions that have landscape-level environmental and household welfare implications.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
The modelling simulations show that coffee contracting can achieve improved incomes for farmers, and increased agroforestry landcover. However, transaction costs can impede many households from accessing contract coffee markets, resulting in trade-offs between higher incomes and increasing rural income inequality. Contract coffee displaces lower-input agroforestry where opportunity costs are low, resulting in significant landscape declines in biomass carbon and increases in soil erosion – an outcome akin to a Jevon's Paradox.
SIGNIFICANCE
Agroforestry value chain interventions deliver trade-offs when seeking to address multiple and complex landscape challenges. Complementary non-market interventions that better align smallholder incentives with environmental policy objectives are necessary for these value chain interventions to be effective tools for Sustainable Intensification.
期刊介绍:
Agricultural Systems is an international journal that deals with interactions - among the components of agricultural systems, among hierarchical levels of agricultural systems, between agricultural and other land use systems, and between agricultural systems and their natural, social and economic environments.
The scope includes the development and application of systems analysis methodologies in the following areas:
Systems approaches in the sustainable intensification of agriculture; pathways for sustainable intensification; crop-livestock integration; farm-level resource allocation; quantification of benefits and trade-offs at farm to landscape levels; integrative, participatory and dynamic modelling approaches for qualitative and quantitative assessments of agricultural systems and decision making;
The interactions between agricultural and non-agricultural landscapes; the multiple services of agricultural systems; food security and the environment;
Global change and adaptation science; transformational adaptations as driven by changes in climate, policy, values and attitudes influencing the design of farming systems;
Development and application of farming systems design tools and methods for impact, scenario and case study analysis; managing the complexities of dynamic agricultural systems; innovation systems and multi stakeholder arrangements that support or promote change and (or) inform policy decisions.