Research | My Site 2

The impacts of environmental change on smallholder farmers

Agricultural production is being challenged by environmental change, including climate change and natural resource degradation, and associated negative impacts are often felt most in smallholder systems. Our work aims to understand the impacts of environmental change on smallholder agricultural production and ways that farmers may enhance production in the face of this change.

Adaptation in response to environmental change

Farmers are facing unprecedented uncertainty, caused by changes in weather and climate and increased natural resource degradation. Yet farmers may be able to reduce the negative impacts of environmental change by adapting their cropping strategies. Our research examines how farmers change their management strategies, and what the impacts of these strategies are on yield and the environment.

Mapping smallholder farms at scale

and at low cost

Remote sensing offers a low-cost way to obtain crop production statistics at scale. Yet it has been difficult to map smallholder farms, which are small, complex, and heterogeneous. Our work develops new methods and uses high spatio-temporal resolution satellite data to map management strategies and the production of smallholder farms.

Using satellite data to measure the impact of and target interventions

One way to enhance sustainable agricultural production is to target interventions to those locations that would benefit the most from a given strategy. We are using satellite data to help identify potential interventions and where they may be most effective. We also use satellite data to measure the impacts of on-farm interventions, giving us a low-cost way to do impact evaluation at scale.