Presentation delivered at the CIALCA international conference 'Challenges and Opportunities to the agricultural intensification of the humid highland systems of sub-Saharan Africa'. Kigali, Rwanda, October 24-27 2011.

1. Tradeoffs in the design of integrated resource management strategies for smallholder farming systems THEME II – System integration CIALCA Conference Kigali, 24 October 2011 Pablo Tittonell 1,2 1 Centre de coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement Montpellier, France 2 Tropical Resource Ecology Program, University of Zimbabwe, Harare

3. TSBF, 2007 Diversity: the agricultural context Viable farm sizes Minimum farm sizes Tittonell et al., AgSys 2010 (Intensification)

6. Long-term dynamics Tittonell et al. (2007), Agricultural Systems 94 Farm developmental cycle (Forbes, 1949)

7. A functional typology for East African highland systems Tittonell et al., AGEE 2005a,b; AgSys 2010 Wealthier households Mid-class to poor households

8. Typologies may become obsolete very soon… Assumptions: Policies and development interventions may impact on the right driving variables to move gradually from A to B A threshold may be there… A B Assumptions: Moving form A to B may not be so easy; these are two alternative system regimes; interventions need to provoke a ‘jump’ (hysteresis) Discontinuity, irreversibility… A B

9. ‘ Hanging in’ ‘ Stepping up’ ‘ Stepping out’ T3 T4 T5 T1 T2 Resources (natural, social, human) Performance (well-being) P’ P’’ R’’ R’ Functional farm types and system states

10. II. Tradeoffs analysis and systems design

13. Tittonell et al. (2007), Agricultural Systems 95 Inverse modelling Paramètres Résultat Modélisation inverse Ensemble de paramètres = décisions de l’agriculteur Résultat Tradeoffs analysis: methods Modélisation directe

15. Objectives: Learning from traditional agro-ecological knowledge systems Contribute to the sustainable intensification of low-input, smallholder farming systems Jared Diamond, Nature 418, 700-707(8 August 2002) Systems design: learning from indigenous agroecology Fernando Funes-Monzote Sustainable intensification of low-input systems

16. III. A systems approach to ISFM

17. A systems approach to ISFM Experimental field On-farm Landscape ?

18. Where do organic resources come from? Diverse livestock production systems Cattle densities

19. Integrated soil fertility management Farmers’ try-outs and adaption plots On-farm trials managed by researchers Improving livestock feeding and manure ‘production’ Improving compost management Manure storage: losses Nitrogen (kg SU -1 )

20. Allocation of manure to different crops Manure allocation strategies (10 year simulations) Productivity of Maize and Napier Effects on soil fertility

21. Prototyping: the ‘ideal’ farm NUANCES-FARMSIM: farm-scale, dynamic bio-economic model Tittonell et al., 2007a,b;2008;2009; van Wijk et al., 2009 Soil parameters Livestock parameters Climatic and management effects Crop responses across heterogeneous farms Activity calendars: seasonal labour and resource allocation Market prices and their variability