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Article published in Proceedings in Food System Dynamics 2014. http://centmapress.ilb.uni-bonn.de/ojs/index.php/proceedings/article/view/384

Goat producers in Inhassoro follow traditional management practices that lead to low supply of low quality goats. This has negative impacts on profitability, and on market access. Traders who buy in the Inhassoro locality buy only small volumes, and buyers from external markets are unaware of potential market supply in Inhassoro. This interaction of production constraints and limited information flows in the value chain was addressed using a system dynamics model for various commercialization scenarios. Simulation results show that improving goat production and animal health practices alone without concomitant improvements in market access have negative impacts on the financial performance of producers and no impact on other value chain actors. However, interventions that both improve market access and animal health have significant positive impacts on the financial performance of all value chain actors. The model’s explicit treatment of herd dynamics contribute significantly to these conclusions, particularly the lagged production response inherent in livestock breeding systems., Proceedings in Food System Dynamics, Proceedings in System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks 2014

Different methodologies have been used to model the epidemiology and economics of aquaculture diseases, including input-output models, benefit- cost analysis, linear programming, simple spreadsheet-based models, compartment models based on differential equations, and spatial models. Despite the advantages that each of these different models provide, there is a need to develop a more integrated approach to the epidemiology and economics of disease that better represents and captures existing feedback mechanisms, interventions to control aquatic disease, and the economic consequences of these interventions on producer behavior. System Dynamics (SD) modeling approaches have utility in this context. While SD has been used to model terrestrial animal diseases, its application in fisheries has been limited to questions of stock management. In this paper, we apply system dynamics modeling in the context of sea lice control in Norwegian farmed salmon. Separate models of sea lice and salmon growth evolution were designed and integrated to capture the feedback between them. Different simulation scenarios highlight the benefits of the approach. GEO-SD360 JMASV-SYSD