Commodity price cycles can arise when there is a tendency to invest more (less) when current prices are high (low). Traditionally this behavior is interpreted as based upon naïve expectations. However, weak financial institutions can also cause this behavior. When borrowing is hard and saving is risky farmers cannot invest

There has been a growing interest in biofuel production to reduce oil dependence in the transportation sector. However, this has also sparked a debate on how the introduction of biofuels may jeopardize food security. In this paper we evaluate the effects of biofuel production on food security using system dynamics. First, we developed a system dynamics model to understand the long-term interaction between food production, biofuel production and livestock farming. Then, we calibrated and applied the model to the Colombian case.

In recent decades, the literature on ecosystem services has pointed to the need to quantify and characterise Soil Natural Capital (SNC) under different types of land use and cover. This points to the need of understanding the SNC processes which define the provision of ecosystem services, as well as their changes through anthropogenic time. Tropical regions are subjected to a high rate of land use transformation which may change the properties of the soil, and consequently the potential provision of ecosystem services.

Garrett R., Rueda X. (2019) Telecoupling and Consumption in Agri-Food Systems. In: Friis C., Nielsen J. (eds) Telecoupling. Palgrave Studies in Natural Resource Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Climate change has compounded the uncertainties inherent in agriculture. Farmers have to make decisions faced with increasingly fluctuating weather, leaving them vulnerable. Access to climate-related information in developing countries, incidentally also the hardest hit by the adverse effects of climate change, is very limited. Given a choice set of technologies that yield different payoffs depending on seasonal weather outcomes, ambiguity arising from imprecise weather information may lead to sub-optimal choices.