Project title: Understanding Farmers’ Motivations to Integrate Livestock, Fish, and Crops
through Analysis of Household Decision-making by Fuzzy Logic Modelling.
PhD student: Roel H. BOSMA
Short description of the proposed research:
The global trend within agriculture is specialisation, but in the deltas of Vietnam, mono-crop rice became integrated farming. The study aims to elucidate farmers’ motivations which enabled this change from mono-crops to integrated farming, by answering the following questions:
1. What were farmers’ perceptions, motivations, and decisions during the rapid change-over
to integrated systems in Vietnam?
2. Can we model the farmers’ decision-making with fuzzy logic?
3. Can we improve our understanding of the motivations to integrate various components in the farming practices?
Views on changes in farming are subject to a paradigm shift. Most models hardly consider farmers’ decisions-making, but fuzzy logic can handle subjective expressions.
Composition of the scientific support project group:
Prof. Dr. J.A.J. Verreth Supervisor WUR / Fish Culture & Fisheries
Dr. ir. Henk M.J. Udo Daily Supervisor WUR / Animal Production Systems
Dr ir Uzay Kaymak Advisor Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Dr ir Jan van den Berg Co-supervisor Erasmus University, Rotterdam
Prof Dr Leontine Visser Co-supervisor WUR / Rural Development Sociology