MIND STEP

Agricultural policies like the EU Common Agricultural Policy are widening the scope to contribute to the Paris Climate Agreement and the Sustainability Development Goals. Consequences are among others a move of the CAP to farm specific measures and an improved link to environment, climate change and ecosystem services. 

This wider scope and measures with a focus on individual farmers ask for a new generation of agricultural impact assessment tools.

The MIND STEP specific objectives

• to develop a highly modular suite of Individual Decision Making (IDM) models focusing on behavior of individual agents in the agricultural sector to better analyze impacts of policies,
• to develop linkages between the new IDM models and current agricultural sector models used at the European Commission to improve the consistency and to broaden the scope of the analysis of policies,
• to develop an integrated data framework to support analysis and monitoring of policies related to agriculture,
• to apply the MIND STEP model toolbox to analyze regional and national policies, selected EU CAP reform options, and global events that affect the IDM farming unit, working together with policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders,
• to safeguard the governance and future exploitation of the MIND STEP model toolbox.

Within MIND STEP, the IBF group is tasked with the development of a new production system representation in GLOBIOM for the EU taking advantage of the rich data availability at farm level and improving the representation of structural change, risk, and other behavioral parameters by linking to IDMs and micro-economic models. 

Last edited: 11 February 2021