Attempts to structurally transform segments of the agri-food system inevitably involve trade-offs between the priorities of actors with different incentives, perspectives and values. Trade-offs are context-specific, reflecting different socio-economic and political realities. We investigate the potential of structured boundary objects to facilitate exposing and reconciling these trade-offs within the context of multi-stakeholder social learning processes with pastoral and mixed crop-livestock communities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Building on boundary objects as items flexible enough to be understood by all without having one common definition, structured boundary objects visualize actors’ input in a comparable format to facilitate knowledge sharing. Stakeholders in each country used a simulation tool and board game to explore the implications of changing livestock stocking and management practices for the environment and for actors’ future socio-economic priorities. Using structured boundary objects elicited trade-offs between household food and animal feed, and between livestock for income, labour, and/ or cultural functions, reflecting the context-specific and subjective evaluations actors make when attempting to plan livelihood changes. Our findings suggest to policy and decision-makers that sustainable transition plans can be developed when stakeholders in local agri-food systems employ approaches that allow shared understandings of trade-offs inherent to sustainable agriculture to emerge.

Demand for animal sourced food is predicted to double in the upcoming 20 years in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is simultaneously a big opportunity in terms of poverty reduction and a significant threat to the environment. The objective of this paper is to present an approach to co-create a set of viable and acceptable development pathways for the livestock sector that maximizes benefits from increased production, exploits the synergies between livestock and the environment, while minimizing the negative effects. It engages local stakeholders and actors into a computer-assisted participatory process, through which local trade-offs and synergies between livestock production, livelihood benefits and environmental impacts can be explored. Scenarios reached by consensus among local stakeholders challenge the dominant discourse of livestock intensification. They suggest that combining extensive and intensive modes enables increased production of animal sourced food with lower additional pressure on the environment than current production modes. The right combination of extensive and intensive production allows for an efficient use of the local biomass and feed resources, and offers opportunities to improve livelihoods for all stakeholders despite their differing economic circumstances, values and traditions.

An increasing degree of attention is being given to pollination ecosystem service. It has become a commonly mentioned example of how ecosystem services are economically valuable due to its linkage to the world food production. A notable bio-economic approach is applied to estimate the economic value of pollination and the production value loss attributable due to a decline in pollinator using the Ethiopian Annual Agricultural Sample Surveys (AgSS) data for the period 2003–2013. We are aiming to fill the research and knowledge gap with respect to spatial and temporal variation of economic valuation and mapping of pollination services in developing countries, by taking Ethiopia as an example. Result indicated that the mean economic value of pollination is about US$81.3 million for this period. Our estimated crop vulnerability ratio was approximately 8.4%, and pollination service contributes about 4.2% of the total farm gate value. The spatial analysis of our estimates revealed discrete patterns of zonal level variation in Ethiopia. Estimates and spatial analyses of pollination values and vulnerabilities provide vital information to determine suitable pollinator management strategies at different institutional and ecological scales. Accordingly, our findings have policy and management implications on the potential benefit of addressing pollinator decline at local level.