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Cortignani, R., & Dono, G. (2018). Agricultural policy and climate change: An integrated assessment of the impacts on an agricultural area of Southern Italy. Environ. Sci. Pol., 81, 26–35.
Abstract: The European Union (EU) has recently reformed its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and, in parallel, has completely abolished the production quotas for milk. These changes will have important consequences for the use of land, of inputs (i.e., water and chemicals) and on the economic performance of rural areas. It is of interest to evaluate the integrated impact of these modifications and of climate change (CC), since the latter could neutralize or reverse some desired effects of the former. For this purpose, this paper evaluates the potential impact of the abolition of milk quotas, as well as of the reform of the first pillar of CAP in two different climate scenarios (present and near future). A bio-economic model simulates the possible adaptation of various farm types in an agricultural area of Southern Italy to these changes, given the available technological options and current market conditions. The main results show that the considered policy changes have small positive impacts on economic and environmental factors of the study area. However, some farm types are more affected. CC can effectively attenuate or reverse several of those effects, especially in some farm types. These results can inform the planning of future changes to the CAP, which will have to act in the context of deeper climate alteration.
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Cortignani, R., & Dono, G. (2015). Simulation of the impact of greening measures in an agricultural area of the southern Italy. Land Use Policy, 48, 525–533.
Abstract: Together, sustainable management of natural resources and climate action form one of the three objectives of the 2014-2020 Common Agricultural Policy. This objective is being addressed by replacing the existing direct payments under Pillar 1 with a basic payment, combined with an additional payment conditional on farmers undertaking agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment, a policy referred to as greening. In this study, the impact of greening was assessed using a hybrid model calibrated using positive mathematical programming. The model describes the macro-types of farm production in a Mediterranean agricultural area. The results show that greening was not beneficial throughout the study area and only some farm types have been particularly affected. However, greening appears to have a positive impact on curtailing the use of chemicals, particularly nitrogen, and on crop diversity. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Coucheney, E. (2015). Sensitivity of crop water and N stress to soil input data in regional cropyield simulations and the implications for data aggregation effects: a case study with the COUP-model (Vol. 5).
Abstract: The effects of aggregating soil input data on modelling crop yields at regional scale have been explored within the MACSUR- Crop M – WP3 scaling exercise for an ensemble of crop models 1. The models were run for the North Rhine-Westphalia region in Germany with an average climate time-series (30 years) and soil data at resolution 1 km to 100 km. Aggregation effects showed substantial differences between the models 1. This could be linked to differences in model structure and concepts and to different procedures for the parameterization of soil properties. A further analysis of the sensitivity of the outputs to key soil properties, for each ‘model – method of parameterization’, could help in understanding differences observed within the model ensemble. In this study, we explored the relationship between winter wheat yields, water and N-stress indexes and simple key-soil properties, based on the COUP-model 2 simulations. Soils were grouped into classes according to selected parameters (i.e. soil depth, soil texture and soil organic content). Preliminary results show that some of those soil classes are clearly associated with high water and / or N-stress and lower yields or with high inter-annual variation of the yield. As such they represent key factors explaining the spatial pattern of the simulated yield at the different resolutions. In addition we identified differences in the fractional area of those soil classes between high and low spatial resolutions (‘inherent errors’ due to data aggregation). How this may influence soil data aggregation effects on simulated yields will be further analyzed. No Label
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Coucheney, E., Buis, S., Launay, M., Constantin, J., Mary, B., García de Cortázar-Atauri, I., et al. (2015). Accuracy, robustness and behavior of the STICS soil–crop model for plant, water and nitrogen outputs: Evaluation over a wide range of agro-environmental conditions in France. Env. Model. Softw., 64, 177–190.
Abstract: Soil-crop models are increasingly used as predictive tools to assess yield and environmental impacts of agriculture in a growing diversity of contexts. They are however seldom evaluated at a given time over a wide domain of use. We tested here the performances of the STICS model (v8.2.2) with its standard set of parameters over a dataset covering 15 crops and a wide range of agropedoclimatic conditions in France. Model results showed a good overall accuracy, with little bias. Relative RMSE was larger for soil nitrate (49%) than for plant biomass (35%) and nitrogen (33%) and smallest for soil water (10%). Trends induced by contrasted environmental conditions and management practices were well reproduced. Finally, limited dependency of model errors on crops or environments indicated a satisfactory robustness. Such performances make STICS a valuable tool for studying the effects of changes in agro-ecosystems over the domain explored. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Coucheney, E., Eckersten, H., Jansson, P. E., Ewert, F., Gaiser, T., Hoffmann, H., et al. (2016). The role of spatial patterns of soil types for data aggregation effects in crop modelling.. Berlin (Germany).
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