Cory Whitney

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Verified

Cory verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Dr. agr.
• Researcher at University of Bonn

Governments around the world seek to create programs that will support sustainable agriculture and achieve food security, yet they are faced with uncertainty, system complexity and data scarcity when making such choices. We propose decision modeling as an innovative approach to help meet these challenges and offer a case study to show the effective...

Governments around the world have agreed to end hunger and food insecurity and to improve global nutrition, largely through changes to agriculture and food systems. However, they are faced with a lot of uncertainty when making policy decisions, since any agricultural changes will influence social and biophysical systems, which could yield either po...

Agroforestry interventions have the potential to benefit the livelihoods of farmers and communities worldwide. However, given the high system complexity, the long-term benefits of agroforestry are difficult to anticipate. This study aimed to integrate uncertainty into long-term performance projections for agroforestry interventions in the highlands...

Voluntary standards can help to ensure the quality of projects eligible for carbon offsetting, i.e., selling carbon certificates. However, in deciding on whether to adopt such standards, the managers of carbon offset projects are faced with uncertainty regarding the costs and risks involved. Decision Analysis provides a helpful set of tools that ca...

Intervening into agricultural systems necessarily includes risks, uncertainties, and ultimately unknown outcomes. Decision analysis embraces uncertainty through an interdisciplinary approach that involves relevant stakeholders in evaluating complex decisions. We applied decision analysis approaches to prioritize 21 farm management interventions, wh...

CONTEXT: Late spring frosts are a major problem for apple production in Germany. Frost events frequently lead to yield losses and quality reduction. This has motivated the development of several frost protection measures, which differ in terms of effectiveness, costs and workload. In many cases, it is an open question for fruit growers if investing...

Accurate estimation is a fundamental skill in decision science, essential for effective decision making across various fields, including agriculture, environmental management, and policy development. To address the challenges of making reliable estimates, we developed an innovative online application designed for calibration training that helps stu...

Use of holistic modelling of different agroforestry systems within the ReForest project to promote adoption in Europe Prajna Kasargodu Anebagilu, Cory Whitney, Andrew Marcil, Marcos Jiménez Martínez, Eike Luedeling Agroforestry has the potential to produce diverse food and income sources, provide balanced development of the region and aid in sustai...

The integration of agroforestry on dairy farms presents a potential paradigm shift in dairy production in the Eifel Region of Germany. Through consultation and interviews with local farmers, foresters and other experts we have developed a decision analysis model to describe the shift from current production to agroforestry on dairy farms and assess...

Fruit tree–based agroforestry has been promoted as an alternative farming practice in upland Northwest Vietnam to replace monocultures of staple crops. Although many studies have focused on evaluating the performance of agroforestry systems at the plot level, research on how farmers perceive and evaluate agroforestry considering whole-farm contexts...

Wild edible plants (WEPs) can provide diverse and nutrient-rich food sources that contribute to the health and well-being of communities worldwide. In northwestern Kenya, WEPs are vital dietary components for nomadic pastoral communities with limited access to diverse cultivated food crops. However, the increasing impact of climate change poses a t...

Climate services can support multiple Sustainable Development Goals. However, in agricultural contexts, the “last-mile” delivery of agro-climate services (ACS) struggles with numerous barriers that prevent smallholder farmers from receiving crucial information. We sought to assess the processes by which farmers adopt ACS in order to support the sca...

Food environments are the underlying physical, economic, political and sociocultural conditions that determine the availability, affordability, quality and safety of food as well as the information, advertising and promotion around food. The regular consumption of processed food and fast food is causing the rate of overweight and obese children in...

Despite being extremely important for holistic research, gender is often overlooked in agricultural and development-related studies. Rural farm women in low-and middle-income countries are the main subject of rural agriculture development interventions for women's empowerment. We study factors influencing their empowerment in agricultural developme...

Fruit tree-based agroforestry has been promoted as an alternative farming practice in upland Northwest Vietnam, which may replace erosion-prone staple crop monocultures. Although many studies have focused on evaluating the performance of agroforestry systems at the plot level, there has been little research on how farmers perceive and evaluate agro...

The food environments of the Ca Dong people have changed dramatically since they were resettled from ancestral lands for the construction of the Dak Drinh hydropower reservoir in 2013. Food environments have shifted from traditional hunting, wild harvesting, and swidden agriculture, to low-income commodity production, leading to a decline in forest...

Many small scale farmers on the Letaba River in South Africa are dependent on river flows for their livelihoods. There is existing conflict between upstream abstractions, as well as provision for environmental flows, that renders their position insecure. The research demonstrated that sustained environmental flow provision by upstream water managem...

Background Understanding how local communities perceive threats and management options of wild edible plants (WEPs) is essential in developing their conservation strategies and action plans. Due to their multiple use values, including nutrition, medicinal, construction, and cultural as well as biotic and abiotic pressures, WEPs are exposed to overe...

This paper is currently in revision after review and not available for sharing.

Given the extensive impact of humans on ecosystems and the uncertainty faced by decision-makers when choosing among alternatives, formal support is required for decision-making in complex agroecological systems. While approaches for producing reliable impact projections accounting for system complexity and uncertainty do exist, decision-makers rare...

Quantification of plant biomass and carbon in ecosystems is critical for climate change mitigation. For large trees in various ecosystems, allometric models for estimating biomass have been developed but few biomass equations exist for small trees and shrubby vegetation. Allometric above-ground biomass (AGB) models are needed for small trees and sh...

Availability is a crucial aspect of wild edible plants (WEPs) consumption by indigenous communities. Understanding the local perception of this availability helps to determine, which contribution WEPs can make to rural communities. We used an integrated participatory approach to investigate important parameters and themes that influenced the percep...

Woody plants support livelihoods and the well-being of billions of people worldwide. However, the establishment, management, and use of essential woody species can vary across regions. We sought to describe the diversity and uses of woody species and explore the values for which people maintain and protect these plants. We conducted research in the...

Many farmers hesitate to adopt new management strategies with actual or perceived risks and uncertainties. Especially in ornamental plant production, farmers often stick to current production strategies to avoid the risk of economically harmful plant losses, even though they may recognize the need to optimize farm management. This work focused on t...

National-scale carbon footprints of livestock production are commonly computed from a set of production system characteristics that serve as inputs for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission models. We evaluated the feasibility of using such equations at a finer scale to derive a simple farm-scale indicator of emission intensity (milk yield per head). Using...

Farmers’ agricultural practices in Vietnam are highly sensitive to weather, climate variability and climate change. The lack of timely and actionable climate-informed agricultural advice leads to significant input and yield losses, which can render investments in farming unprofitable. Development organizations in Vietnam have provided agro-climate...

The introduction of organic farm management practices in sub-Saharan Africa could act as a lever for supporting regional sustainable development. In this study, we sought to assess the sustainability performance of organic (certified and non-certified) and non-organic farms in the dry Kajiado County and the wet Murang’a County in Kenya, based on fo...

CONTEXT Even though diversification of horticultural production systems allows farmers to cope with risks and uncertainties, strategies for raising profitability usually aim to improve the productivity of monocultures rather than pursuing diversification. Horticultural production systems are often highly diversified in terms of land use and planted...

Decision making in pest management is a challenging task. While pest dynamics are often quite uncertain, such decisions are often based on tenuous assumptions of certainty (economic injury levels and marginal utility approximations). To overcome such assumptions and adequately consider uncertainty, we apply decision analysis to evaluate management...

Ornamental heather (Calluna vulgaris) production is characterized by high risks such as occurrence of fungal diseases and plant losses. Given the general absence of formal research on this economically important production system, farmers depend on their own approaches to assess plant vitality. We provide a reproducible, affordable and transparent...

Wild edible plants have been an important source for human nutrition since ancient times, in particular when access to food is constrained in emergency situations such as natural disasters and conflicts. The war in Syria has now been going on for 10 years since it started in 2011. In addition to the many consequences of this conflict, 6.5 million p...

Developing and testing farmers' adoption pathways of agro-climate services

Socio-Cultural Significance of Yerba Maté among Syrian Residents and Diaspora. Syria is the world's second-largest importer of the dried leaves of Ilex paraguariensis A.St.-Hil., commonly known as yerba maté. The unique story of yerba maté in the Syrian beverage culture started at the beginning of the twentieth century when Syrian migrants returnin...

Voluntary standards help to ensure the quality of projects eligible for carbon offsetting, i.e. selling carbon certificates. However, in deciding on whether to adopt such standards the managers of carbon offset projects are faced with uncertainty regarding the costs and risks involved. Decision Analysis provides a helpful set of tools that can supp...

Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) is carried out with the objective of regaining ecological functions and enhancing human well-being through intervention in degrading ecosystems. However, uncertainties and risks related to FLR make it difficult to predict long-term outcomes and inform investment plans. We applied a Stochastic Impact Evaluation...

Available options for mitigating the impacts of extreme weather events on temperate fruit trees involve a number of risks and uncertainties, leaving growers hesitant about the benefits of implementing new technologies to protect their orchards. We used Decision Analysis approaches, which account for these risks and uncertainties, to assess investme...

Crop models can support agricultural decisions, yet their reliability is necessarily limited when they do not sufficiently represent the complexity and specific circumstances of the target system. In some cases, models have such prohibitively high data requirements that they are only applicable with far-reaching and often questionable assumptions....

While the principles of sustainable development are widely accepted, considering these principles effectively during implementation planning and performance measurement remains a challenge. We argue that predominantly-used results-based approaches, which monitor performance against pre-defined targets and indicators, are ill-suited to performance m...

Agroforestry systems dot agricultural landscapes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where they provide food, fuelwood, fibre, fodder and other products that are used at home or sold for income. Agroforestry also provides ecosystem services that are important and critical for improved livelihoods. By combining trees and/or shrubs with crops and/or livesto...

Many actors in agricultural research, development, and policy arenas require accurate information on the spatial extents of cropping and farming practices. While remote sensing provides ways for obtaining such information, it is often difficult to distinguish between different types of agricultural practices or identify particular farming systems....

Background: Most regions of Myanmar fall within the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot and are threatened with biodiversity loss. Development of a comprehensive framework for sustainable development is crucial. Figs are ecological keystone species within these regions and are also important for traditional spiritual food and health uses, which often...

Forests play an important role in supporting social wellbeing and livelihoods. Forests and forest cover over most of sub-Saharan Africa is being cut down (deforestation) or converted into other vegetation or other land cover forms (degradation). Knowledge on the status of forest cover and how it has been changing is vital for developing the appropr...

Pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.) is one of Uganda's many traditional pulses and may have an important role to play in helping the country to achieve food and nutritional security, while at the same time protecting and enhancing natural resources. The sustainable cultivation of pigeonpea will require, among other things, identification of suit...

Subtropical areas such as the major fruit production zone of Chile are among the most vulnerable environments to climate change. Increasing frequencies of unusual weather events, e.g. excessive rainfall or hail and frost episodes, during the growing season can cause severe fruit losses. This can threaten the viability of farm. and have implications...

Farmers' agricultural practices in Vietnam are highly sensitive to variable weather and vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The lack of timely and actionable weather forecasts and agricultural advisories can lead to significant yield loss and unprofitable investments in agricultural inputs, which can have severe consequences for resource-c...

Winter chill, which temperate trees require in order to overcome dormancy, is expected to decrease substantially in the future in most deciduous fruit tree growing areas. Several mathematical models have been developed in different regions to quantify chill requirements of tree species and cultivars. The Dynamic model has emerged as the most plausi...

Variation in winter temperature is less well understood than in annual and summer temperatures over long timescales, particularly in low-latitude (0–30° N) montane regions with large spatial and topographic heterogeneity. Understanding these variations could be critical for forest manageemnt in these important tree growing regions. We collected tre...

Agricultural management decisions are usually made without perfect knowledge. Decision Analysis (DA) approaches translate available uncertain information on costs, benefits and risks involved in decisions into actionable management recommendations. We illustrate the use of DA procedures to inform decisions on disease management strategies in orname...

Winter chill is expected to decrease in many of the suitable growing regions for deciduous trees. Argentinean North Patagonia hosts extensive fruit tree cultivation, which provides an important contribution to both local and global food security. Using historic records from 11 weather stations from North Patagonia, we evaluate the possible impacts...

Background: Fig trees are ecological keystone species in many tropical regions and play important roles in the spirituality, nutrition and health for many rural communities. Although the tropical forests in Myanmar contain many fig species, little ethnobotanical knowledge on their uses has been recorded.Information about the uses and conservation r...

Background: Most regions of Myanmar fall within the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot and are threatened of biodiversity loss. Development of a comprehensive framework for sustainable development is crucial. Figs are ecological keystone species within these regions and are also important for their traditional spiritual, food and health uses, which of...

Forests in low-latitude (0° N–30° N) regions are important for greenhouse gas sequestration. They harbor around 25% of vegetation carbon stocks. The productivity of these forests is expected to change as the global climate changes. They may absorb less greenhouse gasses, with negative effects on the global climate. However, little is known about ho...

In Mediterranean climates, many deciduous fruit trees are unable to meet their seasonal chill requirements, a situation that may be exacerbated by global warming. Modeling approaches can be used to assess the impacts of climate change on tree crops for the past and forecast possible impacts for the future. We apply modeling approaches to assess cli...

Sustainable land management is at the heart of some of the most intractable challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It is critical for tackling biodiversity loss, land degradation, climate change and the decline of ecosystem services. It underpins food production, livelihoods, dietary health, social equity, climate change adaptation, and ma...

Agricultural landscapes are increasingly being managed with the aim of enhancing the provisioning of multiple ecosystem services and sustainability of production systems. However, agricultural management that maximizes provisioning ecosystem services can often reduce both regulating and maintenance services. We hypothesized that agroforestry reduce...

Colombian population is threatened by noncommunicable diseases. However, local people still use medicinal plants for the treatment of a wide range of health disorders. This research aimed to inventory medicinal plants used for the treatment of obesity, diabetes, hyper-tension and heart diseases available within local herbal shops (herboristerías)....

This survey was conducted in 96 randomly sampled home gardens across eight villages of the Thegon Township situated in Bago region. The research aimed to assess the species diversity of cultivated and wild plants to uncover typology of local home gardens and finally to document traditional botanical knowledge on useful plants and plant management p...

Colombian population is considerably threatened by noncommunicable diseases. However , as traditional medicine is still popular in Colombia, the local people do not hesitate to use medicinal plants for the treatment of a wide range of health disorders. This research aimed to inventory medicinal plants used for the treatment of obesity, diabetes, hy...

This survey was conducted in 96 randomly sampled home gardens across eight villages of the Thegon Township situated in Bago region. The research aimed to assess the species diversity of cultivated and wild plants to uncover typology of local home gardens and finally to document traditional botanical knowledge on useful plants and plant management p...

Winter chill, which temperate trees require to overcome dormancy, is expected to decrease substantially in the future in most deciduous fruit tree growing areas. Several mathematical models have been applied in different regions around the world to quantify this chill requirement. While the 'Dynamic' model has emerged as the most plausible and reli...

Calculate common quantitative ethnobotany indices to assess the cultural signifi- cance of plant species based on informant consensus. The package closely follows the pa- per by Tardio and Pardo-de-Santayana (2008). Tardio, J., and M. Pardo-de-Santayana, 2008. Cul- tural Importance Indices: A Comparative Analysis Based on the Useful Wild Plants of...

This data article provides the datasets that are used in the holistic ex-ante impact evaluation of an irrigation dam construction project in Northern Ethiopia [1]. We used an expert knowledge elicitation approach as a means of acquiring the data. The data shared here captures all the parameters considered important in the impact pathway (i.e. the e...

Irrigation plays a significant role in achieving food and nutrition security in dry regions. However, detailed ex- ante appraisals of irrigation development investments are required to efficiently allocate resources and optimize returns on investment. Due to the inherent system complexity and uncertain consequences of irrigation develop- ment inter...

Many stakeholders including the Ugandan government are growing trees and contributing to increasing tree cover in Uganda. Whereas the contribution of large-scale tree growers to increasing tree cover has been documented, that of smallholder tree growers (STGs) is not known. But because STGs make up the majority of tree growers, it is possible that...

In the arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, perennial challenges of water scarcity and food insecurity are exacerbated by climate change and variability. The development of robust strategies to cope with the region's climatic challenges requires thorough consideration of uncertainty and risk in decision making. We demonstrate the use of probabilistic...

Agroforestry may benefit many farmers of Northwest Vietnam, but it is often difficult to anticipate which of many possible options promises the greatest returns on investment. We applied holistic modelling approaches to provide ex-ante assessments of Net Present Values for seven agroforestry interventions promoted by the World Agroforestry Centre i...

Agroforestry (AF) is an important contributor to global efforts that seek to address climate change and maintain or increase ecosystem services. AF provides food and other products, while improving soil fertility, erosion control, water regulation and other regulating / maintenance ecosystem services, the supply of which varies from place to place...

A quantitative risk-based framework is presented for improving planning and performance management of agroforestry interventions at farm and project levels. The framework first identifies the goals of the various stakeholders involved and the intervention options being considered. Then the various on-site and off-site costs, benefits and risks asso...

Evidence suggests that planting more fruit trees could benefit Kenya’s national agenda of improving livelihoods and reducing malnutrition. However, evidence-based support for specific policy decisions regarding fruit trees is lacking. Decision analysis tools can utilize available expert knowledge rather than requiring perfect data from costly long-...

Decision analysis tools can help to utilise available data and expert knowledge rather than requiring hard data from costly long-term fieldwork and experiments. They allow for the incorporation of disparate data sources and what might be considered 'imprecise' inputs to create a representation of the current understanding of cause and effect relati...

The mountainous northwest of Vietnam, bordering Lao PDR and China, is home for the majority of the country's ethnic minorities. Both poverty and food insecurity are common in the region. Slash-and-burn maize, rice and cassava monocultures have been the main source of local livelihoods for decades. However, increasing population and land scarcity ha...

In Uganda many farmer households have diverse agroforestry systems known as homegardens, which have been adapted over generations to supply a year-round harvest of nutritious foods. The work presented in this dissertation sought to identify the factors that influence the agrobiodiversity of these homegardens and to assess the effects of that agrobi...

In Uganda many farmer households manage diverse homegardens, which have been adapted over generations to supply a year-round harvest of nutritious foods. Various factors influence the agrobiodiversity of these homegardens and consequently the health of the households that keep them. Homegardens in southwestern Uganda (n=102) contained over 200 crop...

The contribution of homegardens to the food and nutrition security of rural farmers has rarely been explored empirically. Our study assesses the influence of homegarden agrobiodiversity, production system parameters, and socioeconomic factors on household dietary diversity and anthropometric conditions in southwest Uganda. Plant inventories of 102...

Decision model for predicting the nutritional benefits of introducing fruits trees on smallholders farms in Kenya

Homegardens are traditional food systems that have been adapted over generations to fit local cultural and ecological conditions. They provide a year-round diversity of nutritious foods for smallholder farming communities in many regions of the tropics and subtropics. In southwestern Uganda, homegardens are the primary source of food, providing a d...

Homegardens are species-rich agroforestry systems with a high diversity of associated traditional knowledge. These systems are an important part of food security for rural marginalized poor around the world, particularly in the humid tropics. Despite the high diversity and cultural importance, little is known about the livelihood-relevant plant div...

Decision Analysis applied to irrigation reservoir management decisions in Burkina Faso

Agroecology embraces a collection of different disciplinary fields, ranging from agriculture and ecology to political theory. A stronger recognition of agroecology in agricultural research, which often has a strong production focus, could help to achieve sustainable development if more holistic and transdisciplinary research approaches are adopted.

The report outlines some Decision Analysis tools for the adaptation and application of Bayesian Networks to agriculture for nutrition development contexts. These are promising as effective strategies for dealing with complex systems, multiple impact pathways, uncertain and incomplete information and other current constraints to meaningful quantitat...

The Lake Victoria Basin is home to the most extensive wetlands in Eastern Africa and these wetlands support remarkably high levels of floral biodiversity. Freshwater plants have a diverse range of uses, with variations in use depending on the plant part and life stage. Medicinal use of plants is very common in rural communities, as there is often n...

The Lake Victoria Basin is home to a great diversity of freshwater plants, with the highest diversity found in the wetlands that occur along the shoreline of Lake Victoria and along the rivers flowing into the lake. The basin is home to the most extensive wetlands in Eastern Africa and these wetlands support remarkably high biodiversity. Freshwater...

The Papyrus Sedge (Cyperus papyrus) and Common Reed (Phragmites australis) are freshwater plant species of value to local livelihoods and is globally assessed as Least Concern but facing threats in the Lake Victoria Basin.

Organic Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) may be on important contribution to Organic 3.0. The way that PGS systems are managed can be a major determinant of their success. In Northern Vietnam differing management of PGS systems can determine their level of social and ecological success, as well as the impressions of farmers and retailers. Neve...

The data is based expert knowledge, from twenty-three experts, verified and updated with available statistics, e.g. from demographic and health surveys, economic studies and agricultural databases. The BN model compares the household-level nutrient supply per year through smallholder and homegarden production vs. the industrial agricultural systems...