IDSIA-SUPSI, Via Cantonale, Galleria 2, 6928 Manno, Lugano, Switzerland
k
Alterra, Wageningen UR, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
and market analysis and their conceptual and technical linkage.
 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 317 482382; fax: +31 317 484892.
E-mail address: martin.vanittersum@wur.nl (M.K. van Ittersum).
www.elsevier.com/locate/agsy
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Agricultural Systems 96 (2008) 150–165Received 10 January 2007; received in revised form 16 July 2007; accepted 17 July 2007
Available online 1 October 2007
Abstract
Agricultural systems continuously evolve and are forced to change as a result of a range of global and local driving forces. Agricul-
tural technologies and agricultural, environmental and rural development policies are increasingly designed to contribute to the sustain-
ability of agricultural systems and to enhance contributions of agricultural systems to sustainable development at large. The effectiveness
and efficiency of such policies and technological developments in realizing desired contributions could be greatly enhanced if the quality
of their ex-ante assessments were improved. Four key challenges and requirements to make research tools more useful for integrated
assessment in the European Union were defined in interactions between scientists and the European Commission (EC), i.e., overcoming
the gap between micro–macro level analysis, the bias in integrated assessments towards either economic or environmental issues, the poor
re-use of models and hindrances in technical linkage of models. Tools for integrated assessment must have multi-scale capabilities and
preferably be generic and flexible such that they can deal with a broad variety of policy questions. At the same time, to be useful for
scientists, the framework must facilitate state-of-the-art science both on aspects of the agricultural systems and on integration. This paper
presents the rationale, design and illustration of a component-based framework for agricultural systems (SEAMLESS Integrated Frame-
work) to assess, ex-ante, agricultural and agri-environmental policies and technologies across a range of scales, from field–farm to region
and European Union, as well as some global interactions. We have opted for a framework to link individual model and data components
and a software infrastructure that allows a flexible (re-)use and linkage of components. The paper outlines the software infrastructure,
indicators and model and data components. The illustrative example assesses effects of a trade liberalisation proposal on EU’s agriculture
and indicates how SEAMLESS addresses the four identified challenges for integrated assessment tools, i.e., linking micro and macro
analysis, assessing economic, environmental, social and institutional indicators, (re-)using standalone model components for field, farmIntegrated assessment of agricultural systems – A component-based
framework for the European Union (SEAMLESS)
Martin K. van Ittersum
a,
*
, Frank Ewert
a
, Thomas Heckelei
b
, Jacques Wery
c
,
Johanna Alkan Olsson
d
, Erling Andersen
e
, Irina Bezlepkina
f
, Floor Brouwer
g
,
Marcello Donatelli
h
, Guillermo Flichman
i
, Lennart Olsson
d
, Andrea E. Rizzoli
j
,
Tamme van der Wal
k
, Jan Erik Wien
k
, Joost Wolf
a
a
Plant Production Systems, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 430, 6700 AK Wageningen, The Netherlands
b
Food and Resource Economics, University of Bonn, Nussallee 21, D-53115 Bonn, Germany
c
UMR System #1123, SupAgro Cirad Inra, 2 Place Viala 34060 Montpellier, France
d
Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, Lund University Box 117, 221 00 Lund, Sweden
e
FLD, Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University (KVL), Hørsholm Kongevej 11, Hørsholm DK-2970, Denmark
f
Business Economics, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KL Wageningen, The Netherlands
g
LEI, Wageningen UR, P.O. Box 29703, 2502 LS The Hague, The Netherlands
h
CRA-ISCI, Via di Corticella 133, 40128 Bologna, Italy
i
IAMM-CIHEAM, 3191 Route de Mende, 34093 Cedex 5, Montpellier, France
j0308-521X/$ - see front matter  2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2007.07.009

essm
2001; Van Ittersum and Donatelli, 2003; Arfini, 2005; Ver-
burg et al., 2006). However, based on our interactions with
need to be relevant in terms of applications.
The fourth obstacle and challenge is related to all three
ultupotential users of research tools for integrated assessment
and studying the literature we argue there are several major
previous challenges and strongly to the third one. Integra-
tion of research and the cross-fertilisation of ideas from dif-Keywords: Bio-economic farm model; Cropping system model; Impact ass
1. Introduction
Agricultural systems around the globe continuously
change as a result of enlarging trade blocks, globalisation
and liberalisation, introduction of novel agro-technologies,
changing societal demands and climate change. Parallel to
liberalisation of markets, the European Union (EU) has
engaged in a political ambition to devise policies that aim
to improve sustainability of agricultural systems, i.e., their
economic viability, environmental soundness and social
acceptability, and to enhance the contribution of agricultural
systems to sustainable development of society and ecosys-
tems at large (EC, 2001, 2005b). Agricultural, environmental
and rural development policies must contribute to these
aims, but in a cost-effective and efficient manner to make
them politically acceptable. Strong interactions between pol-
icies and adoption of agro-technologies exist. Assessing the
strengths and weaknesses of new policies and interactions
with agro-technologies, prior to their introduction, i.e.,
ex-ante integrated assessment, is vital to devise policies that
promote sustainable development. The European Commis-
sion (EC), for instance, has introduced Impact Assessment
of its policies as an essential step in the development and
introduction of new policies since 2003 (EC, 2005a).
Integrated Assessment has been defined as ‘‘an interdis-
ciplinary and participatory process combining, interpreting
and communicating knowledge from diverse scientific dis-
ciplines to allow a better understanding of complex phe-
nomena’’ (Rotmans and van Asselt, 1996). Integrated
assessment and modelling (IAM) has been proposed by
research as a means of enhancing the management of com-
plex systems and to improve integrated assessment (Par-
son, 1995; Harris, 2002; Parker et al., 2002). It is based
on systems analysis as a way to consider, in a balanced
integration, the biophysical, economic, social and institu-
tional aspects of a system under study. The assumption
underlying IAM is that computerized tools from science
contribute to better informed ex-ante integrated assess-
ments of new policies and technologies. They certainly do
not replace a participatory process in which many other
factors and knowledge sources play a determining role,
but allow safe and relatively cheap experimentation, and
quantification of effectiveness and efficiency of different
policy alternatives. Agricultural science has a history in
using systems analysis and what may be characterized as
integrative modelling approaches for analyzing bio-eco-
nomic problems (Heckelei et al., 2001; Kropff et al.,
M.K. van Ittersum et al. / Agricchallenges to overcome to make research tools more useful
for integrated assessment.ent; Indicators; Market model; Sustainable development
First, existing tools, methods and data each cover only
some of the hierarchical levels needed within an integrated
assessment and in particular do not link the micro (field–
farm-small region) and macro (market or sector) levels.
This is partly a matter of not bridging scales and partly a
matter of lack of interdisciplinarity. Policy questions to
be addressed cannot be solved at micro or macro level only,
but need cross-scale consideration. Dalgaard et al. (2003)
recognized scaling from one hierarchical level to another
as a key issue in agro-ecology. Hansen and Jones (2000)
describe different methods for upscaling, and Ewert et al.
(2006a) address the issue of bridging different hierarchies
of scales in natural, economic and social disciplines. Initial
attempts to bridge micro and macro analyses focused on
developing countries for relatively local markets (Sissoko,
1998; Kruseman, 2000). A crucial challenge is to develop
multi-scale methods in general and, more specifically,
methodologies that allow bridging analyses at micro and
macro scales.
Second, the existing IAM approaches are heavily biased
towards either the biophysical, economic or social disci-
plines, and imbalanced in their degree of quantification.
Social aspects pertain to employment, income distribution,
quality of life of farmers, gender in farming, etc., and are
generally not well represented in modelling tools. Further-
more, institutional constraints are often entirely lacking in
present integrated research tools. Institutions are defined as
the formal and informal rules of a society or of organisa-
tions (Spangenberg et al., 2002), that can either facilitate
or hamper the decision making, subsequent implementa-
tion of policies or use of new technologies, and thus, influ-
ence the resulting behaviour of targeted actors (e.g.,
compliance with regulations, intended behavioural
changes). In short, current integrated assessment tools are
still restricted in the range of issues they tackle.
Third, many of the existing models and databases are
currently case specific, restricting their re-use in new prob-
lems and their timely availability when new issues arise.
Also, their limited re-use is not cost-effective. Although
there is an inherent tension between being generic in model
formulation and sufficiently meaningful in applications, we
think we can largely benefit from the concept of compo-
nent-based modelling which breaks up larger models in dis-
crete and re-usable components (Szyperski et al., 2002;
Argent, 2004). This author advocates the use of compo-
nent-based modelling (modelling frameworks) in overcom-
ing the tension between the need for good science and the
ral Systems 96 (2008) 150–165 151ferent disciplines are hindered by the variety of formalisms,
which is also reflected in the software tools implementing