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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Promoting smallholders’ sustainable development in Africa means addressing
agronomic and economic factors but also highly relevant social influences
shaping farmers’ production and affecting household well-being. Holistic,
integrated analyses can help to meet this need, informing more effective
policies and interventions for smallholder farming systems. The authors apply
a transdisciplinary, quantitative approach to analyzing social impacts in the
smallholder context, using milk-producing crop-livestock family farms in
central Madagascar as a test case. First, stochastic frontier analysis is leveraged
to confirm education as a social indicator linked to production efficiency. Then,
linear regression is used for exploratory modeling of children’s educational
outcomes. Findings from the Malagasy case emphasize the influence of
rural infrastructure, parental education, chronic poverty, family planning, and
crop-livestock diversification on children’s educational outcomes among
one region’s farming households. Taken together, results suggest that
Madagascar’s policymakers should consider comprehensive territorial planning
for simultaneously promoting agricultural development and human well-being.
This study illustrates how a transdisciplinary approach to social impacts analysis
can integrate agronomic, economic, and social dynamics and help anticipate
potential outcomes in support of smallholders’ sustainable development.
Description
Keywords
rural development smallholders agri-food systems policy guidance sustainable development social impacts analysis AR4D
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Thom AE, Bélières J-F, Conradie B, Salgado P, Vigne M and Fangueiro D (2024) Exploring social indicators in smallholder food systems: modeling children’s educational outcomes on crop-livestock family farms in Madagascar. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 8:1356985. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1356985
Publisher
Frontiers