Processes of adaptation in farm decision-making models. A review

Abstract

Agricultural production systems should evolve fast to cope with risks induced by climate change. Farmers should adapt their management strategies to stay competitive and satisfy the societal demand for sustainable food systems. It is therefore important to understand the decision-making processes used by farmers for adaptation. Processes of adaptation are in particular addressed by bio-economic and bio-decision models. Here, we review bio-economic and bio-decision models, in which strategic and tactical decisions are included in dynamic adaptive and expectation-based processes, in 40 literature articles. The major points are: adaptability, flexibility, and dynamic processes are common ways to characterize farmers’ decision-making. Adaptation is either a reactive or a proactive process depending on farmer flexibility and expectation capabilities. Various modeling methods are used to model decision stages in time and space, and some methods can be combined to represent a sequential decision-making process.