RISK MANAGEMENT IN CROP PRODUCTION AND FERTILIZER USE WITH UNCERTAIN RAINFALL - HOW MANY EGGS IN WHICH BASKETS

The adagium 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' does not specify how many and which baskets should be used and how the eggs should be distributed. Risk management can be based on controlling external sources of variability, on maintaining a meaningful diversity of activities and on delaying decisions. Quantitative analysis of risks in crop production and of ii the possibilities for these three ways of dealing with them is possible when dynamic crop growth models are combined with long-term weather records. Model results are analyzed for risk management options for sorghum production with a range of N fertilizer rates on three soils of a toposequence in three climatic zones in Burkina Faso. The three levels of analysis are a) quantifying the probability distribution of physical and economic yield for a range of fertilizer levels and soil types, b) quantifying the possible variance reduction by soil heterogeneity or by a combination of soils and N rates, c) developing a procedure for selecting 'meaningful diversity' of soil and N fertilizer combinations.