Increasing voluntary working enthusiasm among poorly resourced farmers by promoting labor and market efficiency

Abstract

Smallholder farming offers few incentives to poorly resourced farmers so they will stay on the land and invest more labor in productivity. We data mined results from a comprehensive household survey to study the decision model about increasing farmers’ enthusiasm. Farmers’ enthusiasm is a positive voluntary behavior (LIIL, larger investments in labor) that can be described by a range of internal and external factors to the household. Here, we built an agent-based model of farmers’ voluntary behavior for farmers from the Central Rift Valley region of Ethiopia. Each virtual agent (farmer) in the model was parameterized using the survey data. We conclude that it is better for the new higher productivity knowledge to improve productivity a single time with a large amount of progress than for it to improve productivity several times with small steps. However, the better strategy for investment in market efficiency is small steps of progress each year over a long time period. There are optimal strategies (integrating the two better strategies) to improve farmers’ choice of voluntary LIIL behavior.