Better understanding the challenges facing agriculture and the impacts of policies - A European platform to support modelling in agriculture

The modelling platform will allow to better understand the functioning of the EU Agricultural Sector at different spatial scales (Member States, regions, farm types, grid, etc.), various agricultural activities, be capable of simulating existing and potential agricultural policies, adoption of technologies, bilateral trade, etc. Other areas to be tackled by the platform will include linkages with land use, low carbon economy and climate change, sustainable development goals and linking agricultural production to upstream and downstream sectors. The platform will include several existing models and serve as a forum for model improvement, linking and development and for foresighting in the area of modelling. The platform will be open to relevant entities from outside the EU.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of up to EUR 1 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude the submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

All major policy developments in the areas of agriculture, sustainable management of natural resources, food or climate change involve impact assessments which are (partly) based on quantitative analysis and projections delivered by models. In the last decades, policies have had to widen the scope of their main objectives to take account of new challenges such as climate change. In addition, policymakers expect that new issues of interest – e.g. working of supply chains – can be informed by model outputs. It is considered that, to bridge the gap between the expectations of policymakers and the capacity of models in a more complex environment, setting up a modelling platform is necessary.

• Improved capacity of current models to deliver on an increasing variety of policy objectives
• Research community on modelling strengthened
• Exploration of future directions for modelling