Sustainable adaptation of typical EU farming systems to climate change (LIFE AgriAdapt)

AgriAdapt aims to increase the resilience of EU agriculture to climate change by demonstrating sustainable adaptation measures with an ecosystem-based approach at farm level. The reasons for this are twofold: (i) to further integrate adaptation into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Cohesion Policy, Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection and EU Biodiversity strategy; and (ii) to raise awareness of climate change vulnerabilities and exchange good practice on adaptation options. 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 (e.g. see the Baseline reports for the 4 main EU Climate Risk Regions);
• 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 are located in Spain (see for example the Climate Adapt case study in Melque de Cercos, Segovia), France, Germany (see for example the Climate-ADAPT case study in Heilbronn, 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 (see among the others the AgriAdapt Manual on framing and adaptation).
• Providing a web-tool supporting typical EU farming systems in improving their adaptation capacity to climate variability and change.
• Raising awareness among farmers and future farmers as regards sustainable adaptation options at farm level by developing, creating and disseminating training packages. In particular the Farming Adaptation Training Pack includes presentations and supporting documents for trainers.
• 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.