Application of Spatial Agent Based Modelling in Agricultural Economics

我的研究着眼于在南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲的大片地区发展基于代理人的粮食干预战略的需求侧经济模型。这些干预战略的特点是采用新颖和创新的农业方法来解决这些地区人口中微量营养素缺乏的问题。将新方法应用于农业的策略是非常重要的。简单地向市场推出更新的、营养丰富的农产品，如化肥，并不意味着当地工业会在一夜之间接受它。此外，必须通过广泛传播关于新型肥料的安全性和附加好处的资料，在当地人民中建立信任。从经济角度来看，可以通过当地市场对这种产品产生的需求来监测这种干预产品的吸收情况。由于经济是由各种不同的混合实体组成的，它们之间的相互作用会产生突发性行为，这些行为可能会让我们了解人口中经济活动的颗粒水平。当前的经济模型试图找到人口作为一个整体的总体属性，而忽略了个体属性。这种宏观的经济观点忽视了构成整个人口的个体行为的动态变化。此外，这些模型本质上过于静态，无法解释大地理区域内实体特征的时空变化。忽视这种关键行为可能会导致对当地人口的不完整假设，并有助于制定可能无法完全达到干预目的的干预策略。因此，我的研究将试图揭示跨大地理区域的地方经济活动的颗粒级特征，以便在干预策略发生时了解当地人口的紧急行为并采取有效措施。基于复杂科学的方法，如基于代理的建模，提供了通过另一种视角来看待经济模型和地理空间研究的方法，并提供了识别和解决空间相互作用实体之间独特行为模式的方法。了解人口中这种现有的动态经济特征将是制定有效的地方政策的重要工具

My research takes a look into developing agent based, demand side economic models of food intervention strategies across large areas of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. The intervention strategies are characterized by novel and innovative agricultural methods for addressing the micronutrient deficiency amongst the population in those areas.Strategies for deploying new methods to farming are non-trivial. Simply introducing newer, enriched farming products, such as fertilizers, into the market does not mean that local industries will adopt it overnight. Moreover, trust must be established in the local population through widespread dissemination of information regarding the safety and added benefits of the new variants of fertilizers. From the economic standpoint uptake of such interventional products can be monitored through the demand generated for the product in the local markets. As economies consist of heterogeneously mixing entities, interaction between them gives rise to emergent behaviours that might offer insights on the granular level economic activities in a population. Current economic models try to find aggregate properties of the population as a whole and ignore individual attributes. Such macroscopic view of the economy overlooks the dynamic changes in behaviour of the individual entities that make up the entire population. Furthermore, these models are too static in nature to account for spatiotemporal changes in characteristics of entities over large geographical areas. Neglecting such crucial behaviour can potentially lead to incomplete assumptions about the local population and contribute to developing intervention strategies that may not fully serve the purpose of the intervention. Therefore, my research will attempt to uncover the granular level characteristics of local economic activities across large geographical regions such that emergent behaviours in local population, in the event of intervention strategies, can be understood and effective measures be taken. Complexity sciences based methodologies, such as agent based modelling, lend ways to looking at economic models and geospatial research through an alternative lens and offer up ways to identifying and addressing the unique behaviour patterns amongst spatially interacting entities. Understanding such existing dynamic economic characteristic in a population would serve as a vital tool in developing effective local policies