FACCE MACSUR gathers the excellence of existing research in livestock, crop, and trade science to describe how climate variability and change will affect regional farming systems and food production in Europe in the near and the far future and the associated risks and opportunities for European food security.
A knowledge hub is an innovative, tailor-made instrument developed by FACCE-JPI, associating 3 complementary dimensions: networking, research and capacity building. The knowledge hub consists of 70 institutions from 18 countries. The overarching challenge is to develop a pan-European capability in the development, use and interpretation of models to perform risk assessments of the impacts of climate change on European agriculture.
In this first phase of FACCE MACSUR (June 2012-May 2015), the emphasis was put on activities supporting the networking of scientists across and within the crop, grassland, dairy/livestock, farm, and socio-economic modelling communities. It achieved a greater understanding for requirements of different existing approaches used in the modelling communities. Inventories and descriptions of available models served as basis for an agreement on core scenario assumptions for modelling activities and for the definition of research priorities, e.g. crop rotations, uncertainty, stochastic economic models, grassland quality, representative agricultural pathways, farm-wise GHG emissions.
The activities of the MACSUR knowledge hub members, known as MACSURians, created great momentum in the modelling of agricultural production: crops, livestock, socioeconomy. By the end of the funded project phase in 2017, many scientific achievements, input to politics and practice and a large network were produced.
MACSURians took on the next challenges in improving the modelling agriculture with climate change in new projects. They stayed connected through the knowledge hub. Among the main achievements and outcomes which would not have been possible without MACSUR:
*At the time of the proposal. Please consider this data as an accurate estimate; it may vary during the project’s lifespan.
Total costs include in kind contribution by grant holders and can therefore be higher than the total requested funding.