On-farm trade-offs for optimal agricultural practices in Mato Grosso, Brazil

To keep yield advances, farmers in Mato Grosso (MT) have been adopting several technological innovations. Therefore, agricultural production systems in MT have become complex and dynamic since farmers have to consider the increase of decision variables when planning and implementing their farming practices. These variables are widely spread across many distinct topics, bringing them together and summarizing information from diverse fields of research has become a difficult task in farmers’ decision-making process. Therefore, we performed an Integrated Assessment simulation experiment with a region-specific bio-economic component to assess trade-offs between different agricultural practices in a double cropping system. The simulation experiment was carried out with MPMAS, a multi-agent software package developed for simulating farm-based economic behavior and human-environment interactions in agriculture. Crop yields were simulated with the Model of Nitrogen and Carbon dynamics in Agro-ecosystems (MONICA). Our simulation results show a trade-off between lower soybean yields with the flexibility of double cropping when soybean with shorter maturity cycle is introduced. Results also captured regional differences in terms of land use share of different crops and farm configurations of double cropping. These results provide key insights into a farmer’s decision-making process depending on a multitude of decision variables.