Eitzel, M.V., Solera, J., Wilson, K.B., Neves, K., Fisher, A.C., Veski, A., Omoju, O.E., Mawere Ndlovu, A., & Mhike Hove, E. (2020). Using mixed methods to construct and analyze a participatory agent-based model of a complex Zimbabwean agro-pastoral system. PLOS ONE, 15(8), e0237638.
The Muonde Trust’s farmer-researchers and outside modelers built a simulation of one Mazvihwa village’s cattle, crops and woodland from the trust’s 35-year data archive, then checked it in community workshops and ran it 499,200 times. Rainfall variability had the largest effect on whether the system lasted 60 years; storing grain was the strongest management intervention; and interventions that broke feedbacks between components (stone walls, feed subsidies) tended to destabilize the system while those that smoothed year-to-year swings helped. The paper reports that Muonde used the model with local leaders to change land-use rules. Two of the authors are Muonde’s founders, so the wiki treats the model analysis as published research and the policy outcome as the trust’s own account. The wiki cites it as the clearest example of a community holding its own long record and turning it into a tool for collective decisions, and as a modeled case for finance that buffers variation over finance that cuts local feedbacks.