Agricultural Decision Analysis: The Causal Challenge

The paper sets out the agenda for reviewing models of decision making in the context of farmers’ use of seasonal climate forecasting. Such forecasts have been framed in terms of shifts in cumulative distribution functions of yields or gross margins. Typically they have been applied to choices about crop variety, crop type, time of planting or level of fertiliser application. Fundamental questions are: how do farmers conceptualise and make use of the information contained in seasonal climate forecasts? Do our models of decision making represent well the way in which these decisions are made?