Organized by ICRISAT and CSIRO, under the CGIAR Research Program on Dryland Systems, 

Bringing about food secure and sustainable livelihood systems in resource constrained smallholder farming systems is the aim of many governments, development partners and the CGIAR worldwide. The concept of an innovations systems approach to this challenge recognizes that we should be primarily concerned with the conditions that are needed to create demand for technologies and how knowledge may be used to bring about such changes. An important component of innovation systems thinking is that innovations most often emerge from systems of actors collaborating and communicating. Key to facilitating this dialogue is the use of systems analysis using computer-based simulation tools. In the context of smallholder resource poor agriculture, common and widely applied examples include climate-based crop risk management tools (e.g. crop-soil farming system models APSIM, DSSAT etc.), household bio-economic models approaches (e.g. optimization, cash-flow budgeting), coupled farm-region-national bio-economic models (e.g. value chain model), and whole farm dynamic models (e.g. NUANCES, APSFARM) to mention a few. How such tools are being applied in research for development, and particularly identifying market-led opportunities for development, will be the focus of the 3-day training workshop which will include hands on training on System dynamics (SD) tools using the iThink software to illustrate SD concepts in a modeling context.

The workshop will focus on the rationale of systems modelling with examples of its application in the real world; value chain models; system dynamics approaches in analyzing and developing value chains in agriculture; transitioning smallholder farm systems in the semi-arid to cope with climate variability and more frequent extreme events; modelling adaptation strategies for crop-livestock systems in Southern Africa and South Asia; tradeoffs and implications for sustainable intensification in dryland agriculture; tool for supporting stakeholders’ assessment and planning sustainable land management (SLM) at the landscape level; and State-of-the-art in model-based approaches.