Tool to Discuss Climate Change Adaptation at a Farm Level

Most European farmers face climatic hazards on their farms due to climate change. This climatic instability makes multi-year projections difficult. To help advisors understand what farmers are experiencing, we developed a simple climate adaptation tool in an Excel sheet during the project. One of the goals was to keep it simple to discuss climate change without adding too many questions to the already planned mitigation audit.
This is a questionnaire divided into four parts. The first part describes the farm’s production. The second part, titled “Climatic Risks,” aims to determine whether the farmer has experienced more climatic incidents in the past five years than before (such as drought, excess water, frost, storm damage, or biotic stress) and how these have impacted their livestock or crop production.
The third part covers farm-specific characteristics related to adaptation of climate change, such as climate insurance, access to irrigation, and soil type. The final section addresses practices the farmer has already tested on the farm.
This short survey has two objectives: quantifying climatic incidents at the farm level and opening a discussion with the farmer on adaptation in a simple way. It is linked to the adaptation measures library also developed during the project. In this way, advisors can suggest tailored measures to farmers and contribute practical examples from the field to enrich the library.