BESTMAP: behavioural, Ecological and Socio-economic Tools for Modelling Agricultural Policy

Abstract

Half of the European Union (EU) land and the livelihood of 10 million farmers is threatened by unsustainable land-use intensification, land abandonment and climate change. Policy instruments, including the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have so far failed to stop this environmental degradation. BESTMAP will: 1) Develop a behavioural theoretical modelling framework to take into account complexity of farmers' decision-making; 2) Develop, adapt and customize a suite of opensource, flexible, interoperable and customisable computer models linked to existing data e.g. LPIS/IACS and remote sensing e.g. Sentinel-2; 3) Link economic, individual-farm agent-based, biophysical ecosystem services and biodiversity and geostatistical socio-economic models; 4) Produce a simple-to-use dashboard to compare scenarios of Agri-Environmental Schemes adoption; 5) Improve the effectiveness of future EU rural policies' design, monitoring and implementation.