Influence of climate change on short term management of field crops – A modelling approach

Climatic change is likely to have an influence on arable farms in Central Europe. We use a modelling approach to assess the effects of weather and its long term development due to climate change on short-term decisions like planting and harvesting, as well as yields. Two models are coupled, a farm management model FarmActor and the crop growth model system Expert-N to investigate the interplay between management and crop growth on a daily basis. We examine different methods of adapting expectations concerning the timing of cropping actions and annual yields to actual observed weather and yield data. Our study focuses on the two major crops winter wheat and silage maize in the Swabian Alb in southwestern Germany. Results show that the model can satisfactorily reproduce the development of planting and harvesting as well as yields that have occurred in the past. Different methods of expectation formation only show minor differences in their effect on action dates and yields. Future climatic change is likely to shift the timing of field actions. Assuming no change in technology (e.g. cultivars), summer crops may be seeded earlier while winter crops could tend to be sown later; harvest may occur earlier and yields might slightly decrease while showing more volatility. This modelling approach has the potential to increase the knowledge about risk profiles of short time agricultural management actions and to improve the land use modelling part of coupled earth system models.