Image: Dan with his poster at the ICAE conference

Adelaide-based UNE PhD candidate and casual academic, Daniel Hill, recently returned from New Delhi, India where he presented at the International Conference of Agricultural Economists. The conference drew over 1,000 delegates.

The poster Dan presented had some elements of his PhD, combined with work he completed as a research assistant at UNE.

“I worked on an ACIAR project, INDOGREEN, for a few years. The project attempted to understand how policy could address poverty and landscape impacts in upland agricultural areas of Indonesia,” Dan said.

Dan’s PhD, which he started in 2021, broadly seeks to understand the extent in which smallholders are able to participate in value chains, focussing on case studies of coffee growers in both Indonesia and Uganda.

“At UNE, I helped build an agent-based model with my supervisor, Emeritus Professor Oscar Cacho, UNE colleague Jonathan Moss, and project colleagues from ICASEPS and Bogor University, Indonesia.”

“The model simulates coffee value chains and their implications for household welfare, as well as environmental impacts such as soil erosion and carbon biomass.

“The modelling results I presented at the conference show how it can be very difficult to achieve multiple objectives through market instruments like coffee value chains alone. The incentives we give farmers to participate in value chains and reduce poverty can also have adverse impacts on landscape environmental outcomes such as extensification and land use changes.

“While we monitor and control these environmental impacts closely through the value chain, doing so induces transaction costs thus reducing the ability of poorer households to engage in the value chain.”

Dan’s poster was well received at the conference and got a special mention in the AARES News and Views Newsletter. His

Outside of his PhD, Dan volunteers as the Committee Secretary for the South Australian branch of the Australasian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society (AARES). 

Dan acknowledges his PhD supervisors: Daniel Gregg, who has since left UNE; Emeritus Professor Oscar Cacho and Professor Derek Baker “who has supported me immensely throughout.”