Abstract: Some farmers may claim that climate change adaptation is easy compared to the difficulties caused by policiesAction based on weather observations only, is insufficient for farmers to respond to climate change. Researchers need support from farmers in understanding the responses in practice.Policies might be too slow to respond to needs for change in agriculture. Winners and losers seem to be observed everywhere.The impacts of climate change is heterogeneous among farm types and regionsEffects beyond 2050 remain largely unclear, mainly because the effects of extreme events are not consideredVariability of yields is important to farm incomes, but most studies only consider average changesFarmers are ready to design their site-specific adaptation response providing that new knowledge and learning spaces are available. A learning process based on integrated models, assessment of short- and long-term effects, is needed for farmers to adapt to climate change, price fluctuations and policy change. No Label

Abstract: Phytophthora infestans (Mont.) de Bary belongs to Oomycetes and it causes the most destructive potato disease worldwide – late blight. It originates from Mexico but it has spread wherever potatoes are grown. P. infestans populations are diversified, sexual or asexual and their composition may be affected by climate changes. Mating type, mitochondrial haplotype, Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) markers, sensitivity to metalaxyl and virulence were evaluated to monitor changes in Polish P. infestans population.Samples of potato leaflets with single late blight lesions were collected from fields located in three regions of Poland: Mlochów, Boguchwala and Siedlce, in three years 2010, 2011 and 2012. In the region of Mlochów intensively protected fields are dominating. There are mainly small gardens and experimental fields near Boguchwala. In Siedlce region early and starch potatoes are cultivated. Total number of isolates tested was 365. Mating type, mitochondrial haplotype and SSR were evaluated using a PCR method. Sensitivity to metalaxyl was tested on rye A agar media. Virulence was tested on detached potato leaflets.Polish P. infestans population is diverse. We did not observe major clonal lineages. A1 mating type (69%) and Ia mitochondrial haplotype (72.7%) dominated. Most of the isolates were sensitive to metalaxyl (66%). We noted differences in population composition between the regions which indicate that cultivation system has an impact on the population of P. infestans. No Label

Abstract: This paper builds a benchmark framework to study optimal land use, encompassing land use activities and environmental degradation. We focus on the spatial externalities of land use as drivers of spatial patterns: land is immobile by nature, but local actions affect the whole space since pollution flows across locations resulting in both local and global damages. We prove that the decision maker problem has a solution, and characterize the corresponding social optimum trajectories by means of the Pontryagin conditions. We also show that the existence and uniqueness of time-invariant solutions are not in general guaranteed. Finally, a global dynamic algorithm is proposed in order to illustrate the spatial-dynamic richness of the model. We find that our simple set-up already reproduces a great variety of spatial patterns related to the interaction between land use activities and the environment. In particular, abatement technology turns out to play a central role as pollution stabilizer, allowing the economy to reach a time-invariant equilibrium that can be spatially heterogeneous. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.