Participatory impact assessment of agricultural practices using the land use functions framework: case study from India

Abstract

What do different stakeholders think of the changing trends in agricultural practices and related policies? We answer this and related questions with respect to Karnataka, an Indian state showing signs of agrarian distress. Using the participatory impact assessment (PIA) method involving farmers, researchers and voluntary workers, we assess the impact of recent policy-driven farming practices. The land use functions (LUFs) framework, which resembles the ecosystem services framework, was adapted in the PIA to address multidimensional sustainability in agricultural landscapes. During the PIAs, participants ranked LUFs in the order of their perceived importance and projected the impact of different practice-policy scenarios on chosen indicators corresponding to each LUF. Three farming scenarios, namely organic, conventional (chemically intensive) and mixed input practices were assessed for their projected impacts on selected indicators of each LUF. The LUF ranking reveals that while stakeholder priorities vary, they remain contrasting to the common policy focus of profit and productivity maximisation. Farmers value family's health and water access the most and financial services the least as functions of their land. Indicator scoring in the PIA revealed that participants rated organic practices as the most beneficial, conventional scenario as detrimental and the now prevailing mixed inputs scenario as having little impact.

Novel participatory indicators of sustainability reveal weaknesses of maize cropping in Benin

“…In recent years, the participation of stakeholders in designing research has increasingly been acknowledged by several studies, including the ones aiming to integrate multiple dimensions and different views of sustainability (e.g., Binder et al 2010;Ramos and Caeiro 2010;Lebacq et al 2013). Although some SIA methods (e.g., König et al 2012;Rametsteiner et al 2011;Purushothaman et al 2012) have already accounted, to some extent, for stakeholders' views in defining the impacts of specific initiatives on sustainability, direct indicators for measuring sustainability are until now based on researchers' choices. Therefore, in contrast to previous DSM methods, we used a PIB approach.…”

“…In developing countries, empirical studies on sustainability have been conducted by Reidsma et al (2011);Purushothaman et al (2012); König et al (2013); Liu and Zhang (2013), and Patil et al (2014) with case studies in China, India, Indonesia, Kenya, and Tunisia. Although these studies have filled, to some extent, the knowledge and research gaps on agricultural sustainability at the farm level in developing countries, they focused specifically on land use problems and followed Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) methods, also termed Sustainability Assessment (SA) methods.…”

Methods to assess farming sustainability in developing countries. A review

“…Qualitative research deals with collecting and analyzing non-numeric information. It tends to focus on exploring, in as much detail as possible, smaller numbers of instances or examples, and aims to achieve "depth" rather than "breadth" (Blaxter et al 1996) (*4) Assessment time perspective: Time perspective given as mentioned by author of methodological approach further developed to be applicable in the developing context (König et al , 2013(König et al , 2015Purushothaman et al 2012). FoPIA is structured around the DPSIR framework (driverpressure-state-impact-response) (OECD 1993).…”

Impact of Rural Land Transfer on Land Use Functions in Western China’s Guyuan Based on a Multi-Level Stakeholder Assessment Framework

“…It employs LUF criteria and encourages participatory policy development and planning. FoPIA is structured around the driver-pressure-state-impact-response framework [43], and can be applied to assess the impacts of a land-use policy [20,44]. FoPIA explores alternative scenarios at the relevant scales, assesses indicators that are assigned to LUFs, and encourages stakeholder participation throughout the planning and implementation process [45].…”