Ensembles of leading European global coupled climate models show impressive reliability for seasonal climate prediction-including useful output for probabilistic prediction of malaria incidence and crop yield.

Accounting for more than half of the European Union's (EU) territory, agriculture ensures food production, manages important natural resources and supports socio-economic development of rural areas. Moreover, it is estimated that 50% of all plant and animal species (including some of that are listed in the EU Habitat Directive) depend on agricultural practices. The continuation of appropriate agricultural land management is essential to ensure these primary functions. Avoidance of farmland abandonment is therefore an important rationale for the EU's Common Agricultural Policy which requires improved knowledge of this phenomenon at the European level. This study assesses the risk of farmland abandonment in the 27 EU Member States. It summarizes the work performed by an expert panel of European scientists and national representatives which aimed to identify the main drivers of farmland abandonment in Europe, to define indicators for assessing its risk of occurrence and to test the value of European-wide data sources to achieve these aims. Drivers were identified under two rationales: low farm stability and viability, and negative regional context. Indicators were defined using recent socio-economic farm data and geospatial datasets. Some indicators were then combined to make a composite risk indicator. Regions with higher risk of farmland abandonment are located in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Sweden and Ireland. This paper demonstrates the challenges of performing a European-wide assessment of a phenomenon influenced by drivers whose effects vary at local levels. Other problems encountered are data heterogeneity in terms of spatial resolution and quality, as well as access to micro-data (local level data). High spatial resolution European datasets measuring farmland abandonment are needed to validate the defined indicators as well as to benchmark the methodology. Furthermore, such data could be used to establish a weighting system for the drivers

Within the European DEMETER project, ensembles of global coupled climate models have shown some skill for seasonal climate prediction. Meteorological outputs of the seasonal prediction system were used in a crop yield model to assess the performance and usefulness of such a system for crop yield forecasting. An innovative method for supplying seasonal forecast information to crop simulation models was developed. It consisted in running a crop model from each individual downscaled member output of climate models. An ensemble of crop yield was obtained and a probability distribution function (PDF) was derived. Preliminary results of wheat yield simulations in Europe using downscaled DEMETER seasonal weather forecasts suggest that reliable crop yield predictions can be obtained using an ensemble multi‐model approach. When compared to the operational system, for the same level of accuracy, earlier crop forecasts are obtained with the DEMETER system. Furthermore, PDFs of wheat yield provide information on both the yield anomaly and the uncertainty of the forecast. Based on the spread of the PDF, the user can directly quantify the benefits and risk of taking weather‐sensitive decisions. It is shown that the use of ensembles of seasonal weather forecast brings additional information for the crop yield forecasts and therefore has valuable benefit for decision‐making in the management of European Union agricultural production.

In this paper we analyse the economic and environmental impacts of CAP greening introduced by the 2013 CAP reform using the CAPRI model. CAPRI captures the farm heterogeneity across the EU and it allows to depict the implementation of the greening measures in high detail while integrating the environmental effects and the market feedback of the simulated policy changes. The simulated results reveal that the economic impacts (land use, production, price and income) of CAP greening are rather small, although some farm types, crops (fallow land and pulses) and Member States may be affected more significantly. The CAP greening will lead simultaneously to a small increase in prices and a small decrease in production. Farm income slightly increases because the price effects offset the production decline. Similarly to economic effects, the environmental impacts (GHG emissions, N surplus, ammonia emissions, soil erosion, and biodiversity-friendly farming practices) of CAP greening are small, although some regions may see greater effects than others. In general, the environmental effects at EU level are positive on a per hectare basis, but the increase in UAA can reverse the sign for total impacts. Overall, simulated GHG and ammonia emissions decrease in the EU, while the total N

Summary 1.Farmland biodiversity continues to decline mainly because of agricultural intensification and land abandonment. Agri-environment schemes can be designed to halt this loss by favouring extensification of agricultural practices and through sympathetic management of field boundaries and fallow land. In Europe, High Nature Value (HNV) farmland is defined as low-intensity farmland supporting or associated with a high rate of biodiversity, in terms of species richness or habitat diversity and therefore plays a crucial role in the maintenance of European biodiversity. However, no large-scale analysis has explored the role of these areas in achieving conservation goals. 2. We analysed information from widely used indicators in order to describe the impact of low-intensity agriculture on farmland biodiversity in France. We used the HNV farmland indicator, based on agricultural statistics such as the Farm Structure Survey and the grassland survey, and common bird indicators, i.e. the Farmland Bird Indicator (FBI), the Community Specialization Index (CSI) and species richness indexes, based on the French Breeding Bird Survey. 3. Temporal trends in the farmland bird indicator showed that populations of farmland birds were more likely to increase inside HNV areas compared to non-HNV areas. Although species richness is not higher within HNV farmland, bird communities are composed by more specialist species than in non-HNV areas. In addition, these specialist bird species are significantly more abundant in HNV areas. 4. Synthesis and applications. Further farmland biodiversity decline is potentially reversible through an appropriate management of HNV areas. Existing and future agri-environment schemes should focus on preserving and extending HNV farmland, by favouring the maintenance of low-intensity agriculture and landscape complexity. Priority should be given to preserving diversity at the community level, with the help of adequate indicators, such as the ones presented here. The role of HNV farmland or similar concepts in combining agriculture and biodiversity goals should be further analysed and further used as large-scale conservation tools.