Integrated assessment of farm level adaptation to climate change in agriculture : an application to Flevoland, The Netherlands

The findings of the thesis allowed assessing plausible futures of agriculture in Flevoland around 2050 with insights in effective adaptation to climate change at different levels. Besides empirical findings, this thesis contributed methodologically to the portfolio of climate change impact and adaptation assessment. Overall, this thesis performed a prospective (using scenarios), multi-scale (taking into account crop, farm and regional level), integrated (notably multi-objective) and participatory assessment. The following features have been elaborated in this thesis to better assess the context of farm level impact and adaptation: analysis of long term farm structural change, assessment of farmers’ multiple objectives, assessment of contribution of crop and farm level adaptation measures to improvement of farm performance on important objectives, and an analysis on institutional feasibility of implementation of adaptation measures.