The project estimates at multiple scales the consequences of introducing innovative MiFAS at the farm, community, regional and EU scale in terms of resilience, efficiency, climate change mitigation potential and delivery of other eco-system services as well as on rural development in a wider context. Synergies and trade-offs between efficiency and resilience will be assessed at farm, community, regional and EU scales. For this, an integrated assessment framework is developed, enabling the assessment of efficiency and resilience of farming systems at multiple scales.

Although efficiency and resilience can create synergies, e.g. when efficiency leads to financial reserves thereby providing buffer capacity to deal with shocks and stresses, trade-offs can also occur. Best practices can vary across regions depending on natural resources, climate and desired system functions. The framework is then applied at various scales (single farm, multiple neighbouring farms cooperating in a regional, and EU-scale), with a particular focus on the agricultural sector in the selected countries (UK, the Netherlands, Portugal and Denmark).

Upscaling to EU-level will be done through extrapolating thereby considering differences in agro-ecological zones and farm structure. Our approach is both top-down and bottom up. For the top-down approach, we use data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), enriched with environmental variables from national datasets. For the bottom-up approach, we employ data from the project research at farm, landscape and value-chains level for cross-validation.

The novelty of our framework is derived from the inclusion of multiple sub-sectors and integration of multiple objectives. Our model also for simulating the optimal reallocations of GHG emissions if there would be an emissions trading market. This is relevant since the agricultural sector has thus far been exempt from such emissions trading. Quantification of the gains from trade of GHG emission permits is in this light useful.

Finally, we assess the role of policy instruments in transition scenarios. We develop effective policy measures that can lead to mixed production patterns at the various levels, which efficiently reduce total GHG emissions and fulfill resilience demands.

The project will prepare a:

• report on the MIXED multi-scale framework for assessment of MiFAS
• report on efficiency and resilience analysis at farm level
• report on upscaling of efficiency and resilience analysis to community, regional, national and EU-level
• report with policy recommendations on transition scenarios towards MiFAS

See poster on the initial policy related work presented at the AGROMIX policy summit in Brussels, 17 April 2024:

Overview of agroforestry related policy instruments in the larger framework of the CAP

See also poster presented at a MIXED workshop in Toulouse, September 2023:

Efficiency and resilience assessment at farm level and Upscaling of efficiency and resilience analysis to community, regional, national and EU-level