Modelling of Farm Management

Assessments or projections of crop and grassland productivity at the regional or European scales are increasingly performed for policy-making purposes. A common approach is to use crop and/or grassland simulation models. Simulations are conducted at the field-scale and their outputs are then up-scaled at the regional or European scales. Such field-scale simulations generally assume « best farming practices », farm management being seen as the systematic implementation of the most efficient combination of farming practices. In practice, due to constraints related for instance to weather or machinery availability, « best farming practices » can hardly be achieved. Difficulties of crop and/or grassland simulation models in reproducing yields at multiple sites, farms, and regions have been related to inappropriate consideration of the factors and processes, e.g. farm management, determining yield variability over space and time. The objective of this project is to evaluate the impact of modelling farm management as « best farming practices » when estimating grassland productivity at different scales (field, farm, region).