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Even though precision farming (PF) technologies offer apparent on-farm and off-farm benefits, their adoption remains low. A lot of efforts are put towards increasing interest among farmers and other actors and motivating them to use PF techniques. Among others, gamification is a popular method that is being increasingly used not only in agriculture but in many other disciplines. This study describes the implementation of PF principles as an added application (mod) in a farming simulator game. The developed mod includes several new features: RTK base stations, soil types, soil sampling, pH value, site-specific variable rate lime and nitrogen application, yield mapping and economic analysis.

In an era of global warming, long-standing challenges for rural populations, including land inequality, poverty and food insecurity risk being exacerbated by the effects of climate change. Innovative and effective approaches, such as Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), are required to alleviate these environmental pressures without hampering efficiency. In countries with unequal distribution of land, where issues of access to and use of land rank high on the policy agenda, policymakers are confronted with the challenge of implementing interventions such as land reforms, whilst endeavouring to ensure that sustainable agriculture approaches be adopted by farm-households. The aim of this study is to investigate how land reforms can provide an opportunity for policymakers, particularly in lower-income countries, to enhance not only equity and efficiency but also environmental sustainability. In particular, this study builds on an extensive review of the theoretical and empirical literature and employs a conceptual framework analysis method to develop and describe a framework that explores how land reforms can be associated with the CSA approach. The resultant “Climate Smart Land Reform” (CSLR) framework contains four driving pillars, namely land redistribution, tenure reform, rural advisory services, and markets and infrastructure. The framework disentangles relevant channels through which land reforms, via its four pillars, can foster CSA adoption and thus contribute to the attainment of sustainable increases in agricultural productivity, climate change adaptation and climate change mitigation. The framework also includes relevant channels through which more ‘traditional’ objectives of land reformers, including economic, social and political objectives, can be achieved. In turn, the (partial) attainment of such objectives would lead to improvements in agro-ecological and socio-economic conditions of rural areas and populations. These improvements are considered within the framework as the ‘ultimate’ objective of land reformers. The CSLR framework represents an innovative way of conceptualising how land reforms can generate beneficial effects not only in terms of equity and efficiency but also of environmental sustainability.

The fourth agricultural revolution has started with an explosion of online, smart, digital technologies that are now available to support farmers to improve their operations is enabling opportunities for direct integration between agricultural and computer-based systems. However, the wide range of devices and applications available can be overwhelming and the farming community is showing reluctance to adoption of these new technologies. As part of an EU-funded, multi-partner research project we developed, in collaboration with farmers and other stakeholders, a novel on-line system that supports EU farmers and paying agencies to reduce the administrative burden of CAP’s cross compliance record-keeping and inspections. During the co-development phase we interviewed Greek and Lithuanian farmers about their user needs in relation to the novel system and their potential adoption of this new technology. We analysed their qualitative responses and could identify two groups; ‘Optimistic’ and ‘Reluctant’ in relation to their use of novel technologies. In order to achieve up-take of new technologies within the European farming community, we considered these findings using the Theory of Planned Behaviour and concluded that focussing on the ease of adoption and peer usage would encourage the highest adoption rates as opposed to focusing on changing farmer attitudes.

Agricultural production in Less Favoured Areas (LFAs) is more difficult since farming faces certain natural challenges. Such barriers may lead to a reduction or suspension of agricultural activities resulting in a series of environmental pressures such as loss of biodiversity and land abandonment. Thus, maintenance and sustainable development of the agricultural systems within the LFAs emerges as a prerequisite for preserving the environment of the English uplands. Towards this direction, the identification of factors that enhance or hinder agricultural performance in the LFAs is required to enable the design of future development strategies and policy interventions. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is employed here to group into core underlying factors variables related to climate and landscape characteristics as well as management choices. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) was then used to test the explanatory power of the independent variables in explaining variations in business performance. Financial and physical data used in the study were derived from the Farm Business Survey dataset whereas climate variables were obtained from the Met Office climate monitoring. The results provide evidence to support that remoteness, climate, financial aid and technological level are drivers of good performance of the grazing livestock systems. Hence, the results suggest areas of policymaking interventions in the livestock sector of the LFAs that aim towards sustainable intensification of production.

Evidence in the literature supports that farmers’ ability to choose the best available production technology is restricted when capital structure negatively influences farms’ financial performance. Therefore, empirical evidence is sought to provide an understanding of the relationship between capital structure and technical efficiency of Italian farms in a period of five years (2008 – 2013). It is concluded that significant improvements could be achieved for most of the farms in the sample by improving production and management practices. Furthermore, results provide an empirical support of the adjustment theory by showing a negative impact of debt to asset ratio to technical efficiency.

Identifying and assessing technology gaps and technology leaps observed in the agricultural productivity change analysis is of paramount importance since it enables the identification of a set of effects that influence the way that inputs are transformed into outputs and resources are allocated between diversified farm activities. Previous studies have ignored the importance of heterogeneity between different farming systems and their characteristics and have also failed to account for the different rates of technology absorption with respect to an unrestricted universal production frontier considering simultaneous generation of main products and by-products. Furthermore, the technology leaps defined as varying rates of technology absorption over time with respect to the unrestricted universal production frontier may lead to miss-specified local production functions and biased efficiency and productivity change estimates. The analysis focused on the regional variation of the production environment, farm specialisation and level of engagement as constraints to productivity gains. By considering two different levels of endogenous and exogenous heterogeneity in the production environment, the analysis used data from the Farm Business Survey of English arable farms for the years 2005-2013 and employed the parametric stochastic meta-frontier analysis to measure sustainable productivity change as producers engage into agricultural and diversified activities as alternative sources of income. The model approaches simultaneous value-adding generation processes to reveal the relationship between change in producers’ endowments and productivity gains in a network application under uncertainty.

Project number:245233, Project title: SUSTAINMED Sustainable agri-food systems and rural development in the Mediterranean Partner Countries Call identifier: FP7-KBBE-2009-3 Funding scheme: Collaborative Project Deliverable 10

The “cotton issue” has been a topic of several academic discussions for trade policy analysts. However the design of trade and agricultural policy in the EU and the USA has become a politically sensitive matter throughout the last five years. This study utilizing the Agricultural Trade Policy Simulation Model (ATPSM) aims to gain insights into the global cotton market, to explain why domestic support for cotton has become an issue, to quantify the impact of the new EU agricultural policy on the cotton sector, and to measure the effect of eliminating support policies on production and trade. Results indicate that full trade liberalization would lead the four West African countries to better terms of trade with the EU. If tariff reduction follows the so-called Swiss formula, world prices would increase by 3.5%.

This paper examines and analyzes the impacts of the reformed CAP as well as the decisions of the new round of negotiations for the olive oil and cotton sectors in the European Union. The aim of this study is to estimate the changes in supply (agricultural supply plus intermediate demand and final production), demand (consumption), price and stock formation (import, export, beginning and ending stocks, national price formation) for both the olive oil and cotton sectors. The model designed for this purpose is partial equilibrium and policy oriented. The objectives of this model are to estimate changes in the production and consumption of the two products concerned, to determine how the reformed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the new round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) affect these two sectors, to analyze the evolution of export and import volumes, and finally to determine how this evolution will influence the welfare situation of the olive oil and cotton sectors.