Sustainable Intensification - Laos

Damien Jourdain
Last updated on Mar 22, 2022

Sustainable intensification (SI) of farming systems aims to increase food production from existing farmland in ways that have a lower environmental impact and maintain the food production capacity over time. There are concerns about the sustainability of the maize mono-cropping systems that are in use in Laos today. Therefore, to explore the potential adoption of alternative agricultural systems, I teamed up with Dr. Juliette Lairez (UPR AIDA, CIRAD) to construct and run a survey where we would explore farmers ranking of objectives when making decisions (using a Best-Worst Scaling approach, and explore farmers’ preferences for technological attributes using a discrete choice experiment (DCE).

Farm Modelling Choice Experiment Best-Worst Scaling Lao PDR
Damien Jourdain
Damien Jourdain
Agricultural and Natural Resources Economist

My research interests include technical change, use of natural resources by farming households, environmental valuation

Related

Publications

A choice experiment approach to evaluate maize farmers’ decision-making processes in Lao PDR

We used discrete choice experiments to explore the potential adoption of alternative agricultural systems. We analyse the heterogeneity of farmers’ preferences and heuristics of choices using a latent class model, where class can include different heuristics such as attribute non attendance, and elimination by aspect.
Damien Jourdain, Juliette Lairez, Bruno Striffler, Thomas Lundhede
Project DOI

Identify Lao farmers' goals and their ranking using best–worst scaling experiment and scale‐adjusted latent class models

We developed a best–worst scaling (BWS) experiment, in which farmers have to declare the “most” and the least “important” goals they use when making decisions. We first derive a ranking of the goals according to the population average, which showed the importance of rice self-sufficiency and transmission of farm capital. We then use a scale-adjusted latent class analysis. We identified four groups of homogenous preferences among farmers.
Damien Jourdain, Juliette Lairez, François Affholder
Project DOI

Farmers' preference for cropping systems and the development of sustainable intensification: a choice experiment approach

We used discrete choice experiments to explore the potential adoption or alternative agricultural systems. We analyse the heterogeneity of farmers’ preferences and willingness to pay for different cropping system attributes using a mixed logit model, and we discuss the possible drivers and barriers to the adoption of these more sustainable options.
Damien Jourdain, Juliette Lairez, Bruno Striffler, François Affholder
Project DOI

Context matters: Agronomic field monitoring and participatory research to identify criteria of farming system sustainability in South-East Asia

Juliette Lairez, Santiago Lopez-Ridaura, Damien Jourdain, Gatien Falconnier, Pascal Lienhard, Bruno Striffler, Chanthaly Syfongxay, François Affholder
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