Scenarios of longterm farm structural change for

Authors: Maryia Mandryk Pytrik Reidsma Martin K van Ittersum

Publish Date: 2012/03/03

Volume: 27, Issue: 4, Pages: 509-527

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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 driverfarm 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 levelGlobally climate change became an important issue during the last decades In many regions in the world one can observe effects of the changes in climatic conditions or climate variability on crop productivity farmers’ income and land use Olesen and Bindi 2002 Bradshaw et al 2004 Berry et al 2006 Reidsma et al 2009 Bindi and Olesen 2011 Also for the future of agriculture in a temperate zone such as The Netherlands the potential importance of climate change cannot be ignored especially regarding effects of weather extremes Bresser 2005 van Dorland et al 2008 PeltonenSainio et al 2010 Schaap et al 2011 However changes in agricultural policy setting market responses and technological development were shown to be at least equally important drivers of change for agriculture Hermans et al 2010 Due to the impact of these drivers farms in The Netherlands have been changing considerably since World War II Meerburg et al 2009 Those changes affected not only the numbers of farms but also accounted for new farm types through structural changes Structural changes fall into the category of strategic medium to longterm investment decisions to fundamentally change farm size specialization or production intensity Zimmermann et al 2009Impacts of future climate change are usually projected on current farms and cropping systems Easterling et al 2007 Since the impacts of climate change will be relatively minor in the short term assessments must be performed for a long time horizon 2050 in present study when climate change will likely be more manifest For such time horizon effects of other drivers must be considered At the same time assessments of impacts and adaptation strategies have focused primarily on food production Easterling and Apps 2005 Easterling et al 2007 while in The Netherlands and Europe as a whole multifunctionality has become more important Effective adaptation strategies thus need to consider additional economic social and environmental objectives associated with the multifunctionality of agriculture Therefore one has to take into account that the farms in the future are not the same as the current ones they will evolve through structural changesThe most common quantitative method to study farm structural change is using econometric models as shown in the review by Zimmermann et al 2009 or agentbased models as applied by Piorr et al 2009 However nearly all of the past studies had short time horizons Econometric models have been used to assess farm structural change due to climate change on the long term eg Seo 2010 but using the assumption that farmers are profit maximizers has been disputed by Rufino et al 2011 Furthermore a long time horizon brings many uncertainties as to how future farm development will unfold in the context of multiple drivers of change acting at different levels Agentbased models may provide a more realistic approach but also in these models decisions are often based on profit maximization Piorr et al 2009 Valbuena et al 2010 developed rules reflecting current farmers’ behavior but their study focused on specific decisions Generally when dealing with a long time horizon these models cannot be used A scenario approach is needed that can deal with both qualitative and quantitative informationHierarchical scenario development to arrive at scenarios at regional level has been performed in many studies Rounsevell et al 2003 Abildtrup et al 2006 Audsley et al 2006 Dockerty et al 2006 Vandermeulen et al 2009 These studies however focused on modeling spatial distribution of agricultural land use at regional and EU scale under global environmental climate change and policy drivers and did not consider farm structural changes induced by these drivers Reidsma et al 2006 made an attempt to project changes in intensity of farm types in order to assess changes in agricultural biodiversity but this study lacked other farm structural characteristics besides intensity Development of hierarchically consistent scenarios of farm structural change at farm and regional level defined by plausible directions of change in climate and socioeconomic developments has not been performed previously We need these scenarios to put climate change impacts into context of other drivers of change and to assess the impacts of more specific crop and farm level adaptation strategies to climate change in the long term The aim of this paper is therefore to assess future structural change of farms in a region under different plausible future scenariosFlevoland is the youngest province of The Netherlands and was formed as a result of reclamation of the former Zuiderzee later known as IJsselmeer The first farmers settled in the northern part of the current province Noordoostpolder during WWII The province was originally designed to serve as an area for optimal agricultural production High quality soils good infrastructure allotment of land large rectangular parcels convenient for management and water availability made it possible for starting up large specialized farms Hence Flevoland is an area having favourable conditions for agricultural production Rienks 2009

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