Environmental Cognition and Smallholder Farming

Perspectives in Global Development: Spring 2024 Seminar Series

Abstract

Applications of satellite data to understand smallholder farming have increased as the spatial and spectral resolution of these data have improved. In this talk Kurt Waldman outlines the various ways satellite data are being used to study smallholder farming and what the use of g.p.s technology and satellite data reveal about smallholder decision making. He focuses on recent trends in using these data for estimating agricultural inputs and outputs and studying smallholder perceptions of climate change. Waldman argues that satellite data reveals the limits of human cognition to recall and process various types of information. He highlights the mismatch between researchers and farmers in this regard and the problematic assumptions typically used to study fundamental decisions around agricultural input use, farm production outcomes and perceptions about weather and climate. Waldman discusses how research on smallholder farming could be improved by integrating findings from psychology demonstrating the prevalence of heuristics and ubiquity of cognitive biases in decision making.

About the speaker

Kurt Waldman is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. He studies judgment and decision making related to environmental sustainability, climate adaptation and food security. He uses interdisciplinary quantitative methods, drawing on behavioral experiments, econometrics, and often integrating social and environmental data. Prior to Cornell, Kurt was an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Indiana University and a postdoctoral research fellow in the Ostrom Workshop. He holds a MS in Applied Economics from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Sustainability from Michigan State University.

Perspectives in Global Development

The Perspectives in Global Development seminars are held Wednesdays from 12:20-1:20 p.m. eastern time during the semester. The series is presented in a hybrid format with some speakers on campus and others appearing via Zoom. All seminars are shown in Warren Hall 175. Students, faculty and the general public are welcome to attend. The series is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Development, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the School of Integrative Plant Science as part of courses GDEV 4961, AEM 4961, NTRES 4961, GDEV 6960, AEM 6960, and NTRES 6960.