AGRI ADAPT

BACKGROUND

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted in its 2014 report that climate change would have negative impacts on agriculture for the rest of this century, even in temperate zones such as in Europe. Integration of adaptation measures into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Cohesion Policy can increase the resilience of EU agriculture to climate change.

OBJECTIVES

LIFE AGRI ADAPT aims to increase the resilience of EU agriculture to climate change by demonstrating sustainable best-practice adaptation measures with an ecosystem-based approach at farm level. The reasons for this are twofold: to further integrate adaptation into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Cohesion Policy, the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection and EU Biodiversity strategy; and to exchange best practice and raise awareness of climate change vulnerabilities and adaptation options, a priority of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change.

Specific project objectives include:

Improving the knowledge base for the development, assessment and monitoring of climate change vulnerability at farm level by developing and testing a common method ready for use in the four EU climate risk areas;

Testing sustainable measures and management approaches for climate change adaptation by identifying and implementing them with concrete action plans on 120 pilot farms covering the three main farming systems (arable land, livestock, permanent crops) in the four EU climate risk areas. The pilot farms will be located in Spain, France, Germany and Estonia and cover 29 600 ha in total;

Promoting sustainable adaptation measures and enhancing the capacity to apply that knowledge in practice by demonstrating those measures to farmers, farmers’ associations, agronomists, food standards agencies and agricultural insurance companies;

Raising awareness amongst farmers and future farmers of sustainable as regards sustainable adaptation options at farm level by developing, creating and disseminating training packages; and

Contributing to the development and implementation of EU policy on climate change adaptation by transferring best-practice and know-how to political, agricultural and food business stakeholders at regional, national and European level, and by mainstreaming across policy areas.

The project is expected to achieve the following:

Produce four baseline reports (one for each EU climate risk area) and distribute those reports to a total of 400 climate experts and agricultural stakeholders;

Compile adaptation measures tailored to arable land, livestock and crop farmers for the 120 pilot farms participating in the LIFE project;

Produce an adaptation assessment and action plan for each of the 120 pilot farms, developed in collaboration with the farmers;

Reduce vulnerability to climate change by 50% on each of the participating pilot farms;

Develop a tool for the assessment of climate change vulnerability at farm level in the four EU climate risk areas;

Identify general proposals for sustainable adaptation measures per farming system, based on results from the pilot farms and disseminate those results to political, agricultural and food business stakeholders at national and EU level and beyond; and

Demonstrate “Farming Adaptation Training Packages” at workshops and other events.

The project is still ongoing, but some “Farming adaptation training packs” have been released.

The “Farming Adaptation Training Pack” integrates simple, realistic, and demonstrative information on adaptation to climate change for the farming sector. The aim is that current and future farmers will not receive information only about the environmental problem, but an overall view of the relationship between adaptation to climate change and farm competitiveness, environmental synergies, regulations compliance, market opportunities, etc.

The “Farming Adaptation Training Pack” includes PowerPoint presentations and supporting word documents for teachers. In the following months this Training Pack will be updated with the project results, including: communication materials of the LIFE project, the main reference documents regarding Sustainable Farming Adaptation to Climate Change in Europe and study cases on pilot farms (short videos and documents).

The “Farming Adaptation Training Pack” will have a Creative Common License-Attribution-Share Alike (CC-BY-SA), this means that it enables free distribution, with the only condition of respecting the mention of the authors and the LIFE logo. Doing this, every user will have the right to share, use, and build upon this work.

The “Farming Adaptation Training Pack” is addressed to trainers. Nevertheless, if you are not a trainer and want to know about this issue, you can download these materials for your own use.