Background and Aims

Farm scale modelling methodologies need to be applied to address the combined effects of mitigation and adaptation options. To be useful they should be applied to relevant case studies for validation and demonstration of the effectiveness of innovating mitigation/adaptation strategies. To understand off-farm implications in terms of carbon footprint and GHG emissions, current farm models need to be extended with lifecycle analyses (LCA) integrating pre-chain GHG emissions and their mitigation. To evaluate changes in farm practices that can contribute to mitigation and adaptation, the variability and diversity of production efficiencies at farm scale must be addressed.

The aim of WP 10 is to describe livestock systems, identify and use case study farms, integrate adaptation and mitigation at farm scale and extend the spatial scale to include further issues (e.g. animal mobility) that are relevant at regional scale in CP4.

Major Outcomes

• Description of the main representative livestock systems to be modelled in the main ecoregions of the project
• Demonstration of mitigation and adaptation strategies on case study farms in the ecoregions
• Use of dynamic process based farm scale models to describe the effect of adaptation and mitigation scenarios for a range of farm types across the agro-environmental zones
• Asssessment of selected mitigation and adaptation options on farm production, carbon and nitrogen flows and losses, and greenhouse gas emissions (including prechain emissions and soil carbon storage)
• Provide the link between farm scale and regional scale analyses including livestock mobility strategies
• Assessment of farm level acceptance of mitigation/adaptation strategies to climate change

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