Extended system dynamics modelling of the impacts of food system drivers on food security, livelihoods and the environment

Abstract

Food security research programmes, such as Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), need to consider extremely complex systems, with many agricultural, environmental, social and economic subsystems interacting with each other on a variety of scales and at a variety of levels on each. This poses considerable challenges in terms of representing the current state of knowledge, exploring how these systems might evolve in the future in response to external drivers and human input, and displaying the behaviour of the many variables involved in a way which is meaningful for stakeholders and policy advisers.