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Dono, G., Raffaele, C., Luca, G., & Roggero, P. P. (2014). Income Impacts of Climate Change: Irrigated Farming in the Mediterranean and Expected Changes in Probability of Favorable and Adverse Weather Conditions. German Journal of Agricultural Economics, 63(3), 177–186.
Abstract: EU rural development policy (RDP) regulation 1305/2013 aims to protect farmers’ incomes from ongoing change of climate variability (CCV), and the increase in frequency of adverse climatic events. An income stabilization tool (IST) is provided to compensate drastic drops in income, including those caused by climatic events. The present study examines some aspect of its application focussing on Mediterranean irrigation area where frequent water shortages may generate significant income reductions in the current climate conditions, and may be further exacerbated by climate change. This enhanced loss of income in the future would occur due to a change in climate variability. This change would appreciably reduce the probability of weather conditions that are favourable for irrigation, but would not significantly increase either the probability of unfavourable weather conditions or the magnitude of their impact. As the IST and other insurance tools that protect against adversity and catastrophic events are only activated under extreme conditions, farmers may not consider them to be suitable in dealing with the new climate regime. This would leave a portion of the financial resources allocated by the RDP unused, resulting in less support for climate change adaptation.
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Trnka, M., Rötter, R. P., Ruiz-Ramos, M., Kersebaum, K. C., Olesen, J. E., Žalud, Z., et al. (2014). Adverse weather conditions for European wheat production will become more frequent with climate change. Nat. Clim. Change, 4(7), 637–643.
Abstract: Europe is the largest producer of wheat, the second most widely grown cereal crop after rice. The increased occurrence and magnitude of adverse and extreme agroclimatic events are considered a major threat for wheat production. We present an analysis that accounts for a range of adverse weather events that might significantly affect wheat yield in Europe. For this purpose we analysed changes in the frequency of the occurrence of 11 adverse weather events. Using climate scenarios based on the most recent ensemble of climate models and greenhouse gases emission estimates, we assessed the probability of single and multiple adverse events occurring within one season. We showed that the occurrence of adverse conditions for 14 sites representing the main European wheat-growing areas might substantially increase by 2060 compared to the present (1981-2010). This is likely to result in more frequent crop failure across Europe. This study provides essential information for developing adaptation strategies.
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Köchy, M., Banse, M., Tiffin, R., Ewert, F., Rötter, R., Van den Pol-van Dasselaar, A., et al. (2014). General outline of plans for an extension phase of MACSUR. FACCE MACSUR Mid-term Scientific Conference, 3(S) Sassari, Italy.
Abstract: FACCE MACSUR has indicated a possible extension of funding by two years until May 2017 (phase 2).For phase 2, hub and theme coordinators suggest the following main activities, that will be discussed during the remainder of the meeting and in the coming months.Evolution, upscaling, and transfer of knowledge gained in regional case studies.Assessment of additional scenarios of socio-economic and climate trends.Further development of an interdisciplinary scientific community.Extending scaling methods for crop models to the European and global scale.Intensification of feed quality and animal health modelling with climate change.Economic models from farm to global level capable of reflecting climate change.
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Dono, G., Cortignani, R., Doro, L., & Roggero, P. P. (2014). The adaptation of farm and awareness of ongoing climate change (CC). FACCE MACSUR Mid-term Scientific Conference, 3(S) Sassari, Italy.
Abstract: Farm planning is based on awareness of climate variability, here assumed to depend on experience gained over the years, and to generate expectations on climatic variables. Expectations are based on probability distributions (pdfs) estimated on climate data and used to generate managing choices by means of Discrete Stochastic Programming. The model simulates the income losses in case farmers do not recognize the ongoing CC, and continue to plan assuming climate stability. In particular, the use of resources in 2010 is simulated based on the pdfs of the early 2000s, despite CC has changed the probabilities of the various states of nature. The model, calibrated with Positive Mathematical Programming, generates a 0.9% income increase when is allowed to adapt to 2010 climate pdfs. The model is also calibrated according to pdfs of 2010, i.e. recognizing CC: in this case income falls of 0.7% when farmers are simulated to use their soil mistakenly based of the 2000 pdfs. Given the short period of CC, the differences represent an appreciable error that farmers may be already committing. Properly specifying with the CC at local level can help building farmers’ awareness on it, and to properly manage their resources, recovering profitability.
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Kanellopoulos, A., Reidsma, P., Wolf, J., & van Ittersum, M. K. (2014). Assessing climate change and associated socio-economic scenarios for arable farming in the Netherlands: An application of benchmarking and bio-economic farm modelling. European Journal of Agronomy, 52, 69–80.
Abstract: Future farming systems are challenged to adapt to the changing socio-economic and bio-physical environment in order to remain competitive and to meet the increasing requirements for food and fibres. The scientific challenge is to evaluate the consequences of predefined scenarios, identify current “best” practices and explore future adaptation strategies at farm level. The objective of this article is to assess the impact of different climate change and socio-economic scenarios on arable farming systems in Flevoland (the Netherlands) and to explore possible adaptation strategies. Data Envelopment Analysis was used to identify these current “best” practices while bio-economic modelling was used to calculate a number of important economic and environmental indicators in scenarios for 2050. Relative differences between yields with and without climate change and technological change were simulated with a crop bio-physical model and used as a correction factors for the observed crop yields of current “best” practices. We demonstrated the capacity of the proposed methodology to explore multiple scenarios by analysing the importance of drivers of change, while accounting for variation between individual farms. It was found that farmers in Flevoland are in general technically efficient and a substantial share of the arable land is currently under profit maximization. We found that climate change increased productivity in all tested scenarios. However, the effects of different socio-economic scenarios (globalized and regionalized economies) on the economic and environmental performance of the farms were variable. Scenarios of a globalized economy where the prices of outputs were simulated to increase substantially might result in increased average gross margin and lower average (per ha) applications of crop protection and fertilizers. However, the effects might differ between different farm types. It was found that, the abolishment of sugar beet quota and changes of future prices of agricultural inputs and outputs in such socio-economic scenario (i.e. globalized economy) caused a decrease in gross margins of smaller (in terms of economic size) farms, while gross margin of larger farms increased. In scenarios where more regionalized economies and a moderate climate change are assumed, the future price ratios between inputs and outputs are shown to be the key factors for the viability of arable farms in our simulations. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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