Session B-4

Title:                            Bio-economic farm modeling

Session organisers:   Guillermo Flichman (IAMM, France) and Pytrik Reidsma (Wageningen Univ., the Netherlands)

Scope of session: Farmers all over the world are continuously challenged by changes. The global food market, trade liberalization, new demand for land for biofuels, climate change and environmental concerns are actual issues affecting production and externalities. In order to assess the economic and environmental impacts of these issues, policy changes and technological innovations on farming systems, bio-economic farm models have been developed. Bio-economic farm models seek to represent farmer’s behaviour using knowledge on technical and socio-economic processes and constraints.

This session will focus on innovative methodological aspects in bio-economic farm modeling. Understanding and modeling of farmer decision making is still a challenge, and improvements should lead to a better representation of reality. Also the use in integrated assessment of sustainable development and scaling issues will be addressed.