IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF THE 2003 CAP REFORM AND THE NITRATE DIRECTIVE ON THE ARABLE FARMING SYSTEM IN THE MIDI-PYRÉNÉES REGION: BIO-ECONOMIC MODELING AT FIELD, FARM AND REGIONAL LEVELS

This paper analyses the impact of the 2003 CAP reform (the so-called Fischler Reform) and its interaction with the Nitrate Directive on the sustainability of selected arable farming systems in a French region (Midi-Pyrénées). The Nitrate Directive is one of the oldest EU environmental programs designed to reduce water pollution by nitrate from agricultural sources, through a set of measures, defined at regional level, and mandatory for farmers of vulnerable zones. This impact analysis is performed through a bio-economic modelling framework coupling the crop model CropSyst and the farm-based model FSSIM developed, within the EU FP6 SEAMLESS project (Van Ittersum et al., 2008). The 2003 CAP reform was compared first to the continuation of Agenda 2000 Regulations and then to a policy scenario combining the CAP reform with the application of the Nitrate Directive. Compared to the continuation of Agenda 2000 Regulations, the implementation of the 2003 CAP reform leads to (i) a decrease of durum wheat area, as the supplement for durum wheat in traditional production zones was reduced and integrated in the single payment scheme, (ii) a slight increase in the land used for irrigated crops, especially for maize grain, considering that 25% of the payments for these crops remain coupled and (iii) an amelioration of farm income due to a better crop allocation. Regarding the environmental results, the 2003 CAP reform induces a decrease of nitrate leaching mostly because of the drop in the level of durum wheat growing under cereal rotations in profit of soft wheat-sunflower rotation which generates less pollution levels. The impact analysis of the policy scenario shows that the potential 3% premium cut is not enough to compel farmers to adopt the Nitrate Directive and to substitute entirely the current activities by the alternative ones based on better N management. The farm income is marginally affected in spite of this premium cut thanks to the implementation of certain alternative activities which are more competitive. The impact on nitrate leaching is not always positive and swings between -6% to +5% depending on farm types. This implies that the partial adoption of better N management is not sufficient to ensure a reduction of leached nitrate. A sensitivity analysis shows that 17% of premium cut is required to enforce all arable farmers in the region to implement this directive.Integrated assessment, Agricultural Policy, Nitrate Directive, Bioeconomic modelling, multi-scale analysis., Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, Q18, Q52, Q58,

A new BDI agent architecture based on the belief theory. Application to the modelling of cropping plan decision-making

Agent-based simulations are now widely used to study complex systems. However, the problem of the agent design is still an open issue, especially for social ecological models, where some of the agents represent human beings. In fact, designing complex agents able to act in a believable way is a difficult task, in particular when their behaviour is led by many conflicting needs and desires. A widely used way to formalise the internal architecture of such complex agents is the BDI (Belief Desire-Intention) paradigm. This paradigm allows to design expressive and realistic agents, yet, it is rarely used in simulation context. A reason is that most agent architectures based on the BDI paradigm are complex to understand by non-computer-scientists. Moreover, they are often very time-consuming in terms of computation. In this paper, we propose a new architecture based on the BDI paradigm that copes with these two issues. In our architecture, the choice of the most relevant action by an agent is based on the belief theory. We present an application of our agent architecture to an actual model dedicated to cropping plan decision-making. This application that takes into plays thousands of farmer agents shows promising results

Une architecture d'agent BDI basée sur la théorie des fonctions de croyance : application à la simulation du comportement des agriculteurs

National audienceLa simulation à base d'agents est maintenant largement utilisée pour étudier les systèmes complexes. Cependant, le problème de la définition des agents est toujours posé. Définir des agents complexes capables d'agir de manière réaliste est une tâche difficile. Un paradigme couramment utilisé pour formaliser le comportement de tels agents est le paradigme BDI (Belief-Desire-Intention). Cependant, ce formalisme est peu utilisé en simulation. Une raison est que la plupart des architectures basées sur celui-ci sont très complexes à comprendre pour des non informaticiens. De plus, elles sont en générales très lourdes en termes de temps de calcul. Dans cet article, nous proposons ici une architecture agent basée sur le paradigme BDI et sur la théorie des fonctions de croyance qui permet de répondre aux difficultés précitées. Nous présentons une application de celle-ci pour la simulation du choix et de la conduite de systèmes de culture par des agriculteurs. Cette application montre que notre architecture permet de faire tourner plusieurs milliers d'agents simultanément

Formal Modeling of Social-Ecological Systems

International audienceThe success of Integrated Assessment and Modeling of social-ecological systems requires a framework allowing the members of such a process to share and gather their respective knowledge about the system under consideration and to get confidence into the reliability of the software that implements the system's model they have produced. To this end, this paper presents an Entity-Process meta-model of SESs and outlines its use

Application of the Procedure for Institutional Compatibility Assessment (PICA) to the implementation of the EU Nitrate Directive in Midi-Pyrenees. Evaluation and suggestions for further improvement and integration into the final version of SEAMLESS-IF

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,

Documentation of baseline and policy scenarios for Test Case 1

Environmental Economics and Policy,

Formal Representation of Water Withdrawal Policies for Integrated Impact Assessment

International audienceThe regulation of water use and water management has evolved considerably in recent years. The evolution of water regulatory systems includes the design of new management policies, which could benefit from ex-ante comparative impact assessments with regard to those of current or past practices. To this aim, the MAELIA project develops an integrated modelling and simulation platform for the assessment of alternative water management policies, especially during low-water crisis in the Adour-Garonne basin (South-West region of France). The development of such an integrated assessment and modelling platform requires the consideration and integration of many entities and processes involved in the system under consideration - water resources and flows, agricultural structures and activities, state and evolution of land cover and land use, etc. This article focuses on the formal representation of two alternative options regarding the choice of water withdrawal policy, which are likely to have considerable impacts on the whole socio-hydro-system s: management by rate of flow (currently applied); and management by volume quotas (alternative to be assessed). Furthermore, the article presents a conceptual framework for the integrated modelling of such social-ecological systems together with graphical notations for models' representation

Simulating Renewable Energy Production Scenarios Under Water and Food Constraints

Energy and agriculture are two big greenhouse gas emitters. Emissions of greenhouse gases lead to rising temperatures and originate long-term shifts in weather patterns, i.e. climate change, causing intense droughts, severe fires, rising sea levels and flooding, together with destructive storms. To reduce emissions, an energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable and low-carbon energy sources is essential, and this cannot be led without considering the deep interlinkages that exist between energy, water and food. Renewable production units can enter into competition with agriculture through land use, and both energy and agriculture are water dependent. Digital tools appear as an efficient and agile way to manage water-energy-food systems. Developing a generic digital tool that contributes to the acceleration of a sustainable energy transition is the aim of this research work. The current work is focused on extending Maelia, a spatially explicit multi-agent simulation platform for integrated assessment and modelling of socio-agro-ecological systems, that enables the simulation of fine-grained spatial and temporal land management scenarios. The platform includes agriculture and hydrology models, considers biomass production and recycling ones, and through this research work, will also integrate solar and windmill models. To make Maelia an innovative digital decision tool that deals with water-energy-food systems, data must be collected, assembled and treated with R, Python and QGIS

From farm, landscape and territory analysis to scenario exercise: an educational programme on participatory integrated analysis

Tools and methodologies have been developed to enable integrated analysis (IA) of complex issues like agro‐ecosystems and natural resources management. They are based on interdisciplinary and often on participatory approaches combining, interpreting and communicating knowledge from diverse scientific disciplines and from stakeholders. In this paper we present the original educational programme built to enable students in agronomy to implement participatory IA methods in order to deal with sustainability issues in rural territory. In this educational programme students take a professional project management situation on a given case study. One of the originality of the course programme lies in its twofold objectives: building student capacities for carrying out integrated multi‐scale analysis of complex systems and providing researchers with an operational research device which facilitates the integrated analysis of new study territories. The educational programme articulates trips in the case study region and formation modules on project management, farming systems sustainability assessment, landscape multifunctionality analysis, stakeholder analysis and interviews, territorial diagnosis and narrative scenario construction. The main objectives and methods used in these modules are presented and discussed in the light of the outcomes of the implementation of this educational programme. Discussion is focused on the main educational and research issues of this programme

The major characteristics of environmental policies and agro-ecological technologies to be studied in Test case 2

Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,