Sustainable farming behaviours: An agent based modelling and LCA perspective

Abstract

The paper is focused on the application of ABM (Agent Based Models) to simulate the evolution of the agricultural system of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which aims at the evaluation of the potential environmental impacts arising from policy implementation, following the methodology known as Consequential Life Cycle Assessment (CLCA). The novelty of our approach is on the multimodeling consideration of the problem of how to evaluate potential environmental impact of farmer’s behaviours. We consider the coupling of a computational model (ABM) and amatrix-based LCA model. The paper only presents preliminary results, exploring the influence of farmers’ environmental awareness on the environmental impacts linked to farming activities. This is possible thanks to the attribution to the agents’ profiles of one specific feature which simulates their “green consciousness level”.