Exploring agent-level calculations of risk and returns in relation to observed land-use changes in the US Great Plains, 1870–1940

Abstract

Land-use change in the U.S. Great Plains since agricultural settlement in the second half of the nineteenth century has been well documented. While aggregate historical trends are easily tracked, the decision-making of individual farmers is difficult to reconstruct. We use an agent-based model to tell the history of the settlement of the West by simulating farm-level agricultural decision making based on historical data about prices, yields, farming costs, and environmental conditions. The empirical setting for the model is the period between 1875 and 1940 in two townships in Kansas, one in the shortgrass region and the other in the mixed grass region. Annual historical data on yields and prices determine profitability of various land uses and thereby inform decision-making, in conjunction with the farmer’s previous experience and randomly assigned levels of risk aversion. Results illustrating the level of agreement between model output and unique and detailed household-level records of historical land use and farm size suggest that economic behavior and natural endowments account for land change processes to some degree, but are incomplete. Discrepancies are examined to identify missing processes through model experiments, in which we adjust input and output prices, crop yields, agent memory, and risk aversion. These analyses demonstrate how agent-based modeling can be a useful laboratory for thinking about social and economic behavior in the past.

Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains

“…This conclusion is consistent with other studies across the plains (Cunfer 2001, 2005; Cunfer and Krausmann 2015; Gutmann et al 2005b; Sylvester and Gutmann 2008; Sylvester et al 2013). It is also consistent with work by Sylvester and colleagues (2015) that showed through an agent-based modeling approach that farmers were sensitive to their environment but not always profit maximizing as they settled and used the land.…”

Socio-ecological trajectories in a rural Austrian region from 1961 to 2011: comparing the theories of Malthus and Boserup via systemic-dynamic modelling

“…To study the external, structural influences land-use models can be applied on the individual level by analysing impacts on decision-making of single agents (e.g. farms) via agent-based modelling (Padró et al, 2019 ) or on an aggregate level focusing on long-term effects and systemic mechanisms of specific land-use systems (Sylvester et al, 2015 ).…”

“Big Data” in Economic History

“…Biogeochemical modeling to estimate the historical production of greenhouse gases from agriculture is one way that these approaches have been used, producing high resolution data for future analysis (Parton, Gutmann, Hartman, et al 2012) and promising valuable results (Hartman, Merchant, Parton, et al 2011; Parton, Gutmann, Hartman, et al 2013; Parton, Gutmann, Merchant, et al 2015). Historical agent-based modeling can also take advantage of high-resolution data to examine the ways people have made economic decisions in particular environmental conditions (Sylvester et al 2015).…”