Modeling the private and social costs and benefits of integrated systems

(PIs: Rachael Garrett, Juliana Gil)

Project Overview

In this project we use the Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM), developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. IFSM is a process based whole-farm model that allows for the assessment of environmental impacts and economics at the farm level under a changing climate. The IFSM was developed for use in temperate climates in the United States and we have been working over the last year to improve the model for use in the tropical and Mediterranean regions and to better capture synergies between the crop and livestock components. We intend to use IFSM iteratively by setting the outputs of a given time step as inputs to the next in order to accurately capture the cumulative effects of crop-livestock rotation over the selected timeframe (including changes in pasture productivity over the years). The inputs into the IFSM model include farm, machinery, and weather data. The IFSM outputs include several economic parameters, ecosystem services, and externalities of interest, including net profits; labor; feed, fuel and fertilizer requirements; feeds produced; feeds bought and sold; food production; water-balance; manure production; nutrient balances; and GHG emissions.