Category: News

The European agricultural sector is undergoing demographic changes, whereby the average age of farmers and average size of farms are simultaneously increasing while the number of young farmers is decreasing.

SURE-FArm presents a tool to analyze the linkages between farm generational renewal and structural change of European farming regions.  The Agricultural Policy Simulator (AgriPoliS), an agent-based model, has been selected to simulate generational renewal. The model is calibrated to the Altmark, a heterogenous farming region in Germany with both family and corporate farms.

Such a tool will support policy makers in their goal to enhance the resilience of European farming systems.

Click here to read the full report: Formulation and adaptation of an Agent-Based Model to simulate generational renewal

The report has been led by IAMO (https://www.iamo.de/)

Authors: Christine Pitson, Franziska Appel, Changxing Dong, Alfons Balmann

Correponding author: Christine Pitson (pitson@iamo.de)

New deliverable on analysis of biographical narratives exploring short- and long-term adaptive behaviour of farmers under various challenges  is avalible on the website.

This report assesses personal histories of family farms, and business histories of corporate farms, to identify phases in the separate production, demographic and policy adaptive cycles as they have impacted on the individuals concerned and their business enterprises.  Analysis of narratives can be used to gain indepth understanding of the rationale surrounding farmer decision making when faced with drivers of change, and how farmers manage critical decision points in their farming businesses. Biographical stories were collected from nine to ten narrators in each of five case studies chosen to represent a range of regions and farming systems in Europe.

The report has been led by Aberystwyth University (https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/) with the collaboration of ILVO (https://www.ilvo.vlaanderen.be/), SLU (https://www.slu.edu/), Unitus (http://www.unitus.it/) and UNWE (https://www.unwe.bg/en/).

Authors: Isabeau Coopmans, Mariana Draganova, Sue Fowler,  Gordana Manevska-Tasevska,  Peter Midmore, Plamen Mishev,  Pip Nicholas-Davis, Andrea Petitt, Charlotte Prové and Saverio Senni.

Corresponding author: Pip Nicholas-Davis.

Click here to read the report

Click here to read the country narratives report

Herewith we share the sad news that on the 29^th of March 2019 Dr Muriel Tichit (INRA, France) passed away. She was strongly engaged in the SURE-Farm project from the early start and played a central role in coordinating the French case study activities. She also led the modelling of ecosystem services across EU regions. But most of all: she was a pleasant and involved colleague.

We will miss Muriel.

The SURE-Farm Consortium

The new deliverable on Farmers’ perceptions of risk and resilience aims to provide a comprehensive overview of farmers’ perception and self-assessment of resilience that would serve as a solid basis for further research on farm resilience.

A farmer survey was designed  for this purpose and conducted in 11 SURE-Farm case study regions across the European Union.

No previous empirical research on farm resilience included so many diverse case studies.

Click here to read more D2.1 Farmers’ perceptions of risk and resilience

Farm demographic and structural change across Europe

Farming systems are resilient if they have the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances and challenges while maintaining their core functions, including the delivery of vital goods and services. Multiple internal and external processes influence the resilience of farming systems. One of these processes influencing the resilience of farming systems comprise farm demographic dynamics.

In SURE-Farm, we explored major trends in farm demographic and structural change in 11 case-studies. Demographic trends, across EU agricultural landscape, highlighted in the report: constant decrease in the number of farms, an increase in average farm size, a decrease of overall work force in agriculture, an increase in average age of farmers and majority are family farms and/or are specialized.

However, a study across a diversity of European farming systems shows that these general trends and their future direction depend on regional specificities related to agro-ecological zoning, socio-economic characteristics, environmental challenges, institutional and cultural embedding and embedding in the value chain.

The obtained similarities/contrasts in sector and regional specificities from the cross case-study comparison can help local governments to tailor their policies to specific situations.

Read the short communication in Short communication on Farm demographic and structural change across Europe 

More information in D3.1 Report on current farm demographics and trends 

Corresponding authors:

Jo Bijttebier- Isabeau Coopmans – Franziska Appel – Ilkay Unay Gailhard – Erwin Wauters

Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food & Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies

When? April 11-12^th 2019

Where? Rettorato of the Università della Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy

The meeting in Viterbo will bring together Institutions, Research Centers, and Universities that are collaborating on the Sure-Farm project. Throughout the two days, there will be presentations to evaluate recent research partners have been working on. The meeting will begin by orientating the upcoming researching findings within the Sure-Farm outlook. Later, in the day, the presentation will be centered on how to ground research findings within case studies. On the final day, there will be presentations on findings in upcoming deliverables; the day will close by addressing and resolving challenges case studies face.

During the week, there will be opportunities to have satellite meetings.

About SURE-Farm

SURE-Farm is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and involves 16 universities and research institutes from 11 European countries, coordinated by the Wageningen University & Research. Its full title is “Towards SUstainable and REsilient EU FARMing systems”

Miranda Meuwissen (@MPM_Meuwissen ) presents  SURE-Farm at the 168 EAAE Seminar in Uppsala (https://www.slu.se/en/departments/economics/research/eaae-seminar-168/).

The presentation entitled “A behavioural perspective on resilience of farming systems” explains the Farming Systems Resilience Conceptual Framework and how does resilience relate to behaviour.

Clik below and have a look at the presentation.

EAAE Seminar-Behavioural- Perspectivesin -Agricultural-Economics-and-Management

EAAE Seminar on Sustainable and resilient farming system in the European Union.

When? The 26-27th  September 2019

Where?  Bucharest (Romania)

The seminar, organized by our partner the Institute of Agricultural Economics (http://www.eadr.ro/), will bring together European agricultural economists with an interest in resilience and sustainability of the farming systems in the EU. It aims to evaluate the present state of resilience and sustainability of the farms in the EU and the ways the farmers are dealing with recent economic, environmental and social challenges and opportunities. The seminar will seek for a better design of the future CAP main directions, for elaboration of suggestions and proposals, in order to mitigate the negative influences identified from the experience of the participants on the resilience of farms in the EU, bringing face to face the ideas of the researchers and private and public stakeholders.

More information about the call for papers and important dates can be found in http://www.eadr.ro/eaae173/

This report presents the findings from an application of the Resilience Assessment Tool in eleven case studies across Europe. Overall, this report presents the first attempt to systematically assess the ability of policies to support the resilience of farming systems. Specifically, how the current configuration of EU and national policies, such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), supports or constrains the capacity of regional farming systems to cope with a range of challenges.

Additionally, the report identifies policy strengths and weaknesses to provide entry points for policy improvements, from a resilience perspective.

Understanding the CAP’s effects on the resilience of regional farming systems requires an analysis of the interactions between the CAP and various other policies, which occur not only within the sector, but also across sectors and jurisdictional levels.

Corresponding Authors:

Peter Feindt – Katrien Termeer – Jeroen Candel – Yannick Buitenhuis

Wageningen University & Albrecht Daniel Thaer-Institute

More Information: D4.2: Assessing how policies enable or constrain the resilience of farming systems in the European Union: Case study results

About SURE-Farm

SURE-Farm is a research and innovation project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and involves 16 universities and research institutes from 11 European countries, coordinated by the Wageningen University & Research. Its full title is “Towards SUstainable and REsilient EU FARMing systems”

This report presents the findings from an application of the Resilience Assessment Tool in eleven case studies across Europe to assess whether and how the current configuration of EU and national policies supports or constrains the capacity of regional farming systems to cope with the range of novel challenges.

Read more

D4.2 Assessing how policies enable or constrain the resilience of farming systems in the European Union: Case study results

You can also find the 11 country reports at:

https://surefarmproject.eu/deliverables/publications/