Capturing farm diversity with hypothesis-based typologies: An innovative methodological framework for farming system typology development

PloS One
Stéphanie AlvarezJeroen C J Groot

Abstract

Creating typologies is a way to summarize the large heterogeneity of smallholder farming systems into a few farm types. Various methods exist, commonly using statistical analysis, to create these typologies. We demonstrate that the methodological decisions on data collection, variable selection, data-reduction and clustering techniques can bear a large impact on the typology results. We illustrate the effects of analysing the diversity from different angles, using different typology objectives and different hypotheses, on typology creation by using an example from Zambia's Eastern Province. Five separate typologies were created with principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA), based on three different expert-informed hypotheses. The greatest overlap between typologies was observed for the larger, wealthier farm types but for the remainder of the farms there were no clear overlaps between typologies. Based on these results, we argue that the typology development should be guided by a hypothesis on the local agriculture features and the drivers and mechanisms of differentiation among farming systems, such as biophysical and socio-economic conditions. That hypothesis is based both on the typology ...Continue Reading

References

Nov 28, 2006·Journal of Environmental Management·Erling AndersenDavid Verhoog

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Citations

Mar 19, 2019·Agronomy for Sustainable Development·Daniel Gaitán-CremaschiWalter A H Rossing
Jul 3, 2021·Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI·Alfredo Valverde LucioEvangelina Rodero Serrano

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCA
PCAs

Software Mentioned

SIMLEZA
R
RISING

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