Predator or prey? - Effects of fast-growing farms on their neighborhood

This paper aims to examine how path-breaking farms which dramatically increase their farm-size influence other farms in an agricultural region by using agent-based participatory experiments. Our experiments are based on the FarmAgriPoliS business management game, in which a human participant manages a farm in AgriPoliS, an agent-based model of structural change in agriculture. With these experiments we can show that the impact on other farms in the model region differs depending on the performance of the human participant. In general, economically successful fast-growing participants (path-breakers) increase regional added value. Although path-breakers have a negative effect on the average income of other farms in the region some other farms may even benefit. Whether a single farm in the region can benefit from a path-breaker depends on the distance. Moreover, even more smaller farms may survive. Although the influence decreases overall with growing distance, the functional correlation is neither linear nor exponential, but wave-like. Acknowledgement : This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG): The research was conducted within the Subproject 5 of the research unit Structural change in Agriculture (SiAg) .