Evaluation of Land Management Options (ELMO)

ELMO is a participatory tool containing detailed guidelines for conducting surveys among farmers about sustainable land management (LM) decision preferences and trade-offs. The tool has been developed to help social scientists understand the complexities of the social and economic drivers of farmers’ land use decisions, to identify the factors that drive, encourage or force farmers into unsustainable LM practices, but also to evaluate which LM options would offer acceptable alternatives in comparison to a ‘business as usual’ (BAU) scenario. ELMO works with individual farmers in a 10-step process:

(1) recording basic information of the respondent’s socio-economic and farming background,

(2) identifying the key livelihood opportunities and constraints over the course of the year, critical times of need, surpluses and shortages,

(3) agree on the LM alternatives to be discussed in the interview and verify a common understanding,

(4) quantify or monetize costs and benefits of each LM alternative,

(5) assess relative costs and input requirements of the agreed LM alternatives compared to the BAU practices,

(6) assess relative benefits in each outcome category compared to the BAU practices,

(7) rank LM benefits and desired outcomes in terms of their relative importance to the farmer,

(8) assess the farmer’s perceptions and preferences with regard to the following advantages of the evaluated LM alternatives: to reduce risk, to require only small upfront investment, to give quick returns, to give permanent benefits, to help fill in cash/food gaps at critical times,

(9) to assess the farmer’s perceptions of the disadvantages associated with different LM alternatives (e.g. more pests, too long time to reap benefits, insufficient evidence of positive impact, unreasonable labour or cash demands) and how important these disadvantages are for the farmer,

(10) assess the farmer’s relative preference for each LM alternative through a final weighing an ranking. ELMO’s 10-step process is designed for African conditions and may require substantial adaptation for use in agricultural systems in other continents.