Abstract
High-level decision-making, such as policy making, needs to take into account the often-conflictinginterests of different stakeholders with the goal of finding solutions to provide trade-offs and buildconsensus towards the adoption of so-called win-win solutions. In this article, the authors suggestthat using a modeling and simulation approach would greatly enrich the deliberation process. Theauthors propose a systematic method to assess possible options, based on the complementarityof argumentation modeling and system dynamics (SD) simulation, in conjunction with fieldexperimentation. As a practical application, the authors assess various options available to agri-foodchain stakeholders when considering the adoption of cereal-legume intercrops as an alternative to solecrops. Taking advantage of the argument analysis, SD simulations are used to: 1) compare differentcultural strategies available to farmers in current operating, market and regulatory conditions; 2)propose plausible what-if scenarios anticipating technological progress, and exploring the impact ofadopting potential incentives and dissuasive regulatory measures.