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# Contribution of systems thinking and complex adaptive system attributes to sustainable food production: Example from a climate-smart village

## Details

**Authors** Jagustović et al.

**Year** 2019

**Publisher** Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, 171, 65-75

**Kind of work** article

**Discipline** Agriculture & Food

**Secondary disciplines** Environment & Sustainability

**Reading level** technical

**Kind of engagement** scholarly

[Read it](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308521X17311009)

## In authors' words

### Abstract

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) conceptually has the potential to contribute to sustainable development goals of achieving zero hunger, reducing land degradation, eliminating poverty, tackling climate change, and promoting gender equality. The scaling-up needed to achieve CSA goals represents a challenge, as it entails understanding synergies between often opposing socioeconomic and environmental priorities and trade-offs over temporal and spatial scales. In this paper, we tested new approaches to support scaling-up food production through investigating the contribution of systems thinking and complex adaptive system (CAS) attributes framework for analysis of CSA. This was done by examining (i) to what extent CSA and (ii) what CAS can make understanding of situation was conceptualized through systems sessions with women farmers in climate-smart village (CSV) Doggoh-Jirapa, northern Ghana, guided by Distinctions, Systems, Relationships and Perspectives (DSRP) framework. Systems thinking and CAS provide system-wide understanding of system elements, dynamics and trade-offs over temporal and spatial scales in selected agri-food systems. As such it could aid horizontal and vertical scaling-up by informing policy development of selection of context-specific portfolio of technologies and practices at landscape and farm levels to achieve goals. This study enabled women farmers in CSV to identify income-generating tree planting activities, with desirable system-wide simultaneous impact. The paper calls for further testing of tools, approaches, and methods that enable dynamic systems thinking to inform scaling-up efforts, while embracing the transdisciplinary nature of complexity and constituent elements of the food system.

### What they set out to do (purpose)

An Agricultural Systems study testing systems thinking and complex-adaptive-system attributes, guided by DSRP, in sessions with women farmers in the climate-smart village of Doggoh-Jirapa, northern Ghana.

### What they found (results)

Systems thinking and CAS give system-wide understanding of elements, dynamics, and trade-offs that could inform scaling-up policy — and the sessions led the women farmers to income-generating tree planting with desirable system-wide impact.

## Commentary

### In short

Applies DSRP as the core systems-thinking method to structure participatory sessions with women farmers analysing a climate-smart agriculture system in northern Ghana.

### Response

DSRP structured the participatory sessions in which women farmers analyzed a climate-smart agriculture system, and the sessions informed planting decisions the participants went on to make. An applied use of the four patterns in agricultural systems research, by authors with no connection to the theory's development.

**Patterns it shows** S, R

**Added** 2026-08-12

**How to cite this** Jagustović et al. (2019). Contribution of systems thinking and complex adaptive system attributes to sustainable food production: Example from a climate-smart village. Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, 171, 65-75.