The challenge
Informed and data-driven decision making
In an increasingly complex world, agricultural decision-making is becoming more difficult. Whether for a single plot or scaled to a whole-of-system level. Increasingly scarce resources also mean that making informed decisions is becoming even more important.
Farmers and producers are seeking ways to help inform and support their decisions so they can optimise outcomes, be they production, profit, environmental, impact or towards other objectives.
Our response
Data and support tools to make better choices
Informed and evidence-based, transparent decision making is an obvious way to improve farm outcomes. It can also reduce conflict and discomfort when otherwise difficult decisions.
We are working with agricultural stakeholders to support this quest and develop tools that can assist them in their decision making.
These include:
ADOPT - Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool
Estimating and understanding the likely adoption of new technology and practices is an important step in research, development, extension and policy.
When ADOPT (Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool) was developed over a decade ago, no existing user-friendly tool existed that applied established socio-economic principles to forecasting and evaluating the likely adoption of agricultural innovations.
It remains the only tool of its type and has been further adapted to meet demand for use in smallholder international scenarios. More recently non-farmer applications in online formats were also adapted.
By integrating well-established adoption factors based on characteristics of the innovation and target population, ADOPT in becoming a valued workshop tool for informing and engaging users, and its predictive capability.
The number of registered users since 2018 has reached over 1200, including many large organisational users. The number of scenarios modelled has doubled every 2 years since the online format was offered in late 2017.
Research organisations, governments, research and development investment organisations, consultancy firms and commercial businesses including start-up companies form the largest proportion of users.
Contact: adopt@csiro.au
RiskWi$e - The National Risk Management Initaitve
RiskWi$e is a National Risk Management Initiative (NRMI) seeking to understand and improve the risk-reward outcomes for Australian grain growers by supporting grower on-farm decision-making.
The Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) have invested $30 million to support this 5-year national initiative, running from 2023 to 2028.
RiskWi$e seeks to understand and improve the risk-reward outcomes for Australian grain growers by supporting grower on-farm decision-making.
To do this it:
- involves grain growers in the identification of on-farm decisions that have unknown components of risk-reward that will be studied to elucidate new insights
- improves understanding of the risk-reward relationships for on-farm management decisions
- informs growers and their advisers of new insights into optimising rewards and managing risk
- challenges grower decision-making so future management decisions are evaluated in terms of the probability of upside returns offset against the associated downside risks.
Our goal is that 80 percent of grain growers can articulate their production management decisions in terms of probability of upside returns (reward) offset against the associated downside risks.
Find more information on RiskWi$e website
Contact: Rick.Llewellyn@csiro.au
$WT - $ummer Weeds Tool
The Summer Weed Tool is an analysis tool that empowers Australian grain growers to consider the benefits of weed control.
The tool helps Australian grain growers weigh up the financial pros and cons of summer weed control. This is done through an innovative app designed for growers to use ‘in paddocks’ across Australia’s broadacre cropping regions.
The tool allows growers to enter soil type, soil water, grain price, fertiliser costs, weed control costs and the density of weeds to generate information on yield benefit and return on investment scenarios, when comparing immediate versus delayed weed control.
The $ummer weeds decision support tool can be downloaded from the Apple App store or Google play.
Value AG
Value-Ag is a multi-tool framework for evaluating predictive impacts of agricultural innovations in smallholder agrifood systems.
It combines whole-farm profit simulated with the Integrated Analysis Tool (IAT), risk and uncertainty metrics borrowed from a Profit-Risk-Utility Framework (PRUF), adoption predicted by the web-based Smallholder ADOPT, and impact assessment through an out-scaled Net Present Value (NPV) analysis.
These CSIRO tools have been applied to case studies in Australia, S/SE Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific region.
Value-Ag currently runs in the open-source programming language R, and is a key element of the socioeconomic research capability in several R4D projects.
Value-Ag aims to support decisions and could be relevant to farmers, researchers, extension staff, research funders, policy makers, and/or credit providers.
Contact: Marta.Monjardino@csiro.au
Weed Integrated Management (WIM) models
The Weed Integrated Management (WIM) models are user-friendly decision support tools that allow farmers and advisors to evaluate the long-term profitability of strategic and tactical weed control methods in broadacre crops at the paddock scale.
Ryegrass model RIM (Pannell et al. 2004) and its cousins, BRIM (brome grass), BYGUM (barnyard grass), BGRIM (barley grass) and AIM (wild oat), allow farmers to test their ideas and generate scenarios for five or ten years in the future.
These tools are available to download for free to test a variety of scenarios. Various situations impact farming systems, including crop and herbicide rotations, mechanical and other chemical weed control tools.
WIM tools can help pinpoint which rotation and weed control tools would work best in a given farming system.
Learn more about WIM: Monjardino M and Llewellyn R (2018). Newly-developed RIM models for the integrated management of brome and barley grasses. In ‘Proceedings of the 21st Australasian Weeds Conference, 9-12 September 2018, Sydney, Australia.
Contact: Marta.Monjardino@csiro.au
Decile Calculator
The Decile Calculator was developed through collaboration with private consultants to quantify the profit-risk profile of farm adaptation strategies.
The tool considers crop yields by rainfall decile, soil type, agronomic management, crop area, livestock numbers, enterprise mix, and farm finance.
It reports economic (profit-and-loss, EBIT, FNP) and financial metrics (net-worth, equity, ROC, cashflow) over one to five years.
We are currently looking at enhancing the functionality and usability of the Decile Calculator. He are transforming it into a web-based decision-support tool that integrates biophysical and socioeconomic data for drought resilience evaluation.
We also aim to incorporate a 10-year period and price sensitivity, recognising the pivotal role of longer timeframes and price volatility in assessing drought impact and recovery. The tool assists in informed farm and investment decisions within risky dryland systems.
Contact: Jackie.Ouzman@csiro.au
PAICE - Prioritising Agronomy in Changing Environments
The anticipated impacts of climate change on cropping systems are well characterized for many regions. But less is known about action strategies that will help communities adapt to these changes at different time-scales.
There are no adaptation ‘silver bullets.’ But consultation over a broad number of considerations is needed to initiate action.
The PAiCE framework provides a process where stakeholders can collaboratively learn and collectively prioritise adaptation options that respond to the most pressing current and projected climate challenges. It also identifies knowledge gaps and areas of uncertainty.
PAiCE aims to generate discussion and is best done in small groups. The ideal group has a diversity of experiences within the focus geography to generate broad discussion.
On completion of PAiCE, participants obtain:
- an understanding of the value of crops in a production domain
- an analysis of economic loss due to various climate challenges over the coming decade
- an evaluation and prioritisation of high potential adaptation options based on economic and contextual outcomes.
So far, PAiCE has been run in 21 countries, primarily in Africa.
We are looking for opportunities to expand this work on other continents and contexts.
Learn more about PAiCE or see the training course.
Contact: Brendan.Brown@csiro.au