WUR | WEC | CSA | PPS | GRS

Problem description

Crop yields achieved by many smallholder famers across the world are often much lower than the expected potential under optimal management and genetic material, but there is also a large variation across regions and households. Predicting crop yields is critical for food security and planning, especially in countries that are more vulnerable to fluctuations in food markets. Similarly, understanding the variation in crop yields across regions and households is required as a first step to address the low productivity of many farms in a sustainable and locally coherent manner. One approach contributing to these goals is the analysis of large data of actual on-farm production (as opposed to experimental trials in research stations) linked to socio-economic and bio-physical variables at the farm or regional level.

Challenge

You will combine data on soil and climate with survey data on wheat, maize and rice production by smallholder farms in Ethiopia and Philippines (multiple combinations of farm and year). Multiple goals can be achieved with these data (choose at least two):

  1. To predict crop yields based on information known before the start of the season.
  2. To explain variation in yields across farms and years with the available data.
  3. To classify households based on their soil, climate or agronomic/socio-economic circumstances (i.e., clustering).

Available data

Two files are provided for you:

  • farmer_survey.csv: Farmer survey data including crop yields (Ya_tha), farm characteristics and observations during the crop season for each year of the survey.
  • weather.csv: Summary of weather and agrometeorological conditions in the farm during each year that a farmer filled the survey. In addition, the geographical coordinates (of each farm or region) can be used to extract soil variables from Soilgrids and bioclimatic variables from Worldclim (see tutorials on Brightspace).

References

Wheat- Ethiopia - Silva, J.V., Reidsma, P., Baudron, F., Jaleta, M., Tesfaye, K., van Ittersum, M.K., 2021a.Wheat yield gaps across smallholder farming systems in Ethiopia. Agron. Sustain. Dev. 41, 12.

Maize-Ethiopia - Assefa, B.T., Chamberlin, J., Reidsma, P., Silva, J.V., van Ittersum, M.K., 2020. Unravelling the variability and causes of smallholder maize yield gaps in Ethiopia. Food Secur. 12, 83–103.

Rice – Philippines (MISTIG) - Silva, J.V., Reidsma, P., Velasco, M.L., Laborte, A.G., van Ittersum, M.K., 2018.Intensification of rice-based farming systems in Central Luzon, Philippines: constraints at field, farm and regional levels. Agric. Syst. 55–70.