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to a great extent known giving us confidence in the use of more integrative whole-
farm modelling tools. In combination with scenarios and sensitivity analyses whole
farm models can be used to study the systems’ behaviour to internal e.g. resource
allocation, and external factors e.g. changes in relative prices, climate change, policy
change, market developments, etc.
In contrast to field-level models, whole-farm modelling deals with two main
issues: (1) urgent or short-term tactical issues, i.e. more isolated actions that take
advantage of opportunities or mitigate impacts within a given farm plan or strategy,
and (2) more strategic decisions driven by medium to long-term objectives in the
family socioeconomic and institutional context in which they operate. In general,
tactical changes mostly deal with incremental changes in response to perceived or
expected changes in the operational environment. Examples include seasonal cli-
mate or market contingent changes that farmers face every day, season or year.
Alternatively, the need to increase preparedness to profit from or mitigate the
impacts of time-evolving changes with the availability of resources i.e. over a 5–10-
year timeframe, requires the identification of ʻbest-fitʼ strategies that allow farm
businesses to remain viable and grow in the face of risks and uncertainties. In gen-
eral, these are the more transformational changes that farmers make in view of the
medium to longer-term outlook; decisions that are usually associated with the suc-
cess or failure of entire farm businesses and potential socioeconomic, environmen-
tal and value-chain implications.
Fig. 6 Conceptualization of the complexities in the management of a farm business and its disag-
gregation into quantifiable or measurable components, and the social-human dimension accessible
via discussion, reflexion and learning (Source: Rodriguez and Sadras 2011 )
D. Rodriguez et al.