Keywords

integrated modelling, ecosystem services, adaptation and mitigation, climate change, cost accounting, agriculture, INCAAM

Location

Session A5: Environmental Modelling of Human and Ecosystem Health Effects From Global to Local Scale

Start Date

11-7-2016 11:10 AM

End Date

11-7-2016 11:30 AM

Abstract

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and market situations on farm profitability and the cost of the provision of ecosystem services. The tool can be used as a stand-alone model to inform stakeholders in agriculture, among them farmers, on past and possible future profitability of production alternatives. Results can be identified for farms with specific characteristics, such as technology options and environmental constraints. Using data for Austria, INCAAM (the Index-based Cost of Adaptation in Agriculture Model) is specific to Central European production conditions in its current version. It is designed to be extended or adapted easily to other production conditions and thus to be used for other regions. Because many import farm commodities and their production technology have already been specified in detail, new products can be added to the model with little efforts. INCAAM can be directly integrated into other models or modeling frameworks via flexible interfaces. This is possible since INCAAM is programmed in GAMS, a software package frequently used in integrated assessment models. The features of the software and underlying database will be demonstrated for a range of wheat production systems in Austria.

COinS
 
Jul 11th, 11:10 AM Jul 11th, 11:30 AM

Explicit cost accounting for adaptation, mitigation and ecosystem service provision in agriculture

Session A5: Environmental Modelling of Human and Ecosystem Health Effects From Global to Local Scale

Farmers, policy makers and scientists are well aware of this problem: obtaining sound cost information for climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in agriculture or ecosystem service provision by agriculture is burdensome. In most cases, data sets are developed for a specific region with a given set of management variants for a baseline period. Adapting such information to another region or adjusting costs to expected future price scenarios requires additional efforts and frequently done an ad-hoc and case by case. A new tool is presented that can be used to identify and analyze the entangled effects of future climate and market situations on farm profitability and the cost of the provision of ecosystem services. The tool can be used as a stand-alone model to inform stakeholders in agriculture, among them farmers, on past and possible future profitability of production alternatives. Results can be identified for farms with specific characteristics, such as technology options and environmental constraints. Using data for Austria, INCAAM (the Index-based Cost of Adaptation in Agriculture Model) is specific to Central European production conditions in its current version. It is designed to be extended or adapted easily to other production conditions and thus to be used for other regions. Because many import farm commodities and their production technology have already been specified in detail, new products can be added to the model with little efforts. INCAAM can be directly integrated into other models or modeling frameworks via flexible interfaces. This is possible since INCAAM is programmed in GAMS, a software package frequently used in integrated assessment models. The features of the software and underlying database will be demonstrated for a range of wheat production systems in Austria.