Abstract: Rather than on crop modelling only, climate change impact assessments in agriculture  need to be based on integrated assessment and farming systems analysis, and account for  adaptation at different levels. With a case study for Flevoland, the Netherlands, we  illustrate that 1) crop models cannot account for all relevant climate change impacts and  adaptation options, and 2) changes in technology, policy and prices have had and are likely  to have larger impacts on farms than climate change. While crop modelling indicates  positive impacts of climate change on yields of major crops in 2050, a semi-quantitative  and participatory method assessing impacts of extreme events shows that there are  nevertheless several climate risks. A range of adaptation measures are, however, available  to reduce possible negative effects at crop level. In addition, at farm level farmers can  change cropping patterns, and adjust inputs and outputs. Also farm structural change will  influence impacts and adaptation. While the 5th IPCC report is more negative regarding  impacts of climate change on agriculture compared to the previous report, also for  temperate regions, our results show that when putting climate change in context of other  drivers, and when explicitly accounting for adaptation at crop and farm level, impacts may  be less negative in some regions and opportunities are revealed. These results refer to a  temperate region, but an integrated assessment may also change perspectives on climate  change for other parts of the world. No Label

Abstract: Towards 2050, climate change is one of the possible drivers that will change the farming landscape, but market, policy and technological development may be at least equally important. In the last decade, many studies assessed impacts of climate change and specific adaptation strategies. However, adaptation to climate change must be considered in the context of other driving forces that will cause farms of the future to look differently from today’s farms. In this paper we use a historical analysis of the influence of different drivers on farm structure, complemented with literature and stakeholder consultations, to assess future structural change of farms in a region under different plausible futures. As climate change is one of the drivers considered, this study thus puts climate change impact and adaptation into the context of other drivers. The province of Flevoland in the north of The Netherlands was used as case study, with arable farming as the main activity. To account for the heterogeneity of farms and to indicate possible directions of farm structural change, a farm typology was developed. Trends in past developments in farm types were analyzed with data from the Dutch agricultural census. The historical analysis allowed to detect the relative importance of driving forces that contributed to farm structural changes. Simultaneously, scenario assumptions about changes in these driving forces elaborated at global and European levels, were downscaled for Flevoland, to regional and farm type level in order to project impacts of drivers on farm structural change towards 2050. Input from stakeholders was also used to detail the downscaled scenarios and to derive historical and future relationships between drivers and farm structural change. These downscaled scenarios and future driver-farm structural change relationships were used to derive quantitative estimations of farm structural change at regional and farm type level in Flevoland. In addition, stakeholder input was used to also derive images of future farms in Flevoland. The estimated farm structural changes differed substantially between the two scenarios. Our estimations of farm structural change provide a proper context for assessing impacts of and adaptation to climate change in 2050 at crop and farm level.