Abstract: Crop production for feed dominates land use in North Savo in eastern Finland. The value of dairy and beef production is appr. 70 % of the total value of agricultural production of the region. In climate change adaptation research we are especially interested in dairy and meat sectors, which are directly dependent on the development of productivity of crop production. Climate change implies changes in cereals and forage crop yields and nutritive quality. There are most likely increasing problems and risks related to overwintering and growing periods. Grass silage is mainly self-produced on farms and most often there is no market for silage. Silage production and use are vulnerable to changes in local climate, because lost yield cannot be easily replaced from market. Risks and costs due to increasing inter-annual yield volatility can be reduced by good management practices, such as crop rotation, plant protection, soil improvements and better crop protection against plant diseases.However the profitability of such measures is dependent on market and policy conditions. Nevertheless new cultivars and species, as well as various options for production and risk management, are most likely needed in future climate. Some adaptations may have multiple benefits which however may realize only in medium or long run. It is important to safeguard the most important and obviously needed adaptations, and identify market and socio-economic conditions which inhibit farmers from necessary adaptations and lead to reduced productivity and increased production costs. No Label

Abstract: The first TradeM workshop was held at Haifa University (Israel), 3-5 March 2013. It was a  state-of-the-art Workshop ‘Economic Modelling on Agriculture with Climate Change for  Food Security’. Sixteen papers are presented, following a call for abstracts submitted in  December 2012.  Presented, reviewed and discussed models, their inputs, outputs and main results of  case-study analyses let indicate of how the model can be used to analyze the  impacts of climate change on food security, how the model can contribute to, and  benefit from other economic and/or crop and livestock models and what input is  needed from CropM and LiveM. There were explored ideas for closer integration and  linkage between agriculture and economic models and between economic models at  different levels, addressing issues of model structure, scale and data processing. Focus was  on model comparison, gap analysis, scientific advancements and improvements. We also  addressed the key challenges of the economic models (macro- versus micro-economics;  uncertainty versus risks; variability and distribution), and identified ways to cope with  scaling, uncertainty, risks. The workshop let identify the requirements from CropM and  LiveM, find policy questions that MACSUR is going to address, start with the content of the  case studies and plan for publication of scientific papers.  The sessions were broadcast live via the internet. Twenty-four registered participants and  about 65 local visitors attended the workshop.This work was co-financed by NCBiR, Contract no. FACCE JPI/04/2012 – P100 PARTNER No Label

Abstract: Priorities in addressing research gaps and challenges should follow the order of im­por­tance, which in itself would be a matter of defining goals and metrics of importance, e.g. the extent, impact and likelihood of occurrence. For improving assessments of cli­mate change impacts on agriculture for achieving food security and other sustainable develop­ment goals across the European continent, the most important research gaps and challen­ges appear to be the agreement on goals with a wide range of stakeholders from policy, science, producers and society, better reflection of political and societal prefer­ences in the modelling process, and the reflection of economic decisions in farm manage­ment within models. These and other challenges could be approached in phase 3 of MACSUR.