Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 4
A Component-Based Framework for Simulating
Agricultural Production and Externalities
Marcello Donatelli, Graham Russell, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli, Marco Acutis,
Myriam Adam, Ioannis N. Athanasiadis, Matteo Balderacchi, Luca Bechini,
Hatem Belhouchette, Gianni Bellocchi, Jacques-Eric Bergez, Marco Botta,
Erik Braudeau, Simone Bregaglio, Laura Carlini, Eric Casellas, Florian
Celette, Enrico Ceotto, Marie Hélène Charron-Moirez, Roberto Confalonieri,
Marc Corbeels, Luca Criscuolo, Pablo Cruz, Andrea di Guardo, Domenico
Ditto, Christian Dupraz, Michel Duru, Diego Fiorani, Antonella Gentile,
Frank Ewert, Christian Gary, Ephrem Habyarimana, Claire Jouany, Kamel
Kansou, Rob Knapen, Giovanni Lanza Filippi, Peter A. Leffelaar, Luisa
Manici, Guillaume Martin, Pierre Martin, Eelco Meuter, Nora Mugueta,
Rachmat Mulia, Meine van Noordwijk, Roelof Oomen, Alexandra
Rosenmund, Vittorio Rossi, Francesca Salinari, Ariel Serrano, Andrea Sorce,
Grégoire Vincent, Jean-Pierre Theau, Olivier Thérond, Marco Trevisan,
Patrizia Trevisiol, Frits K. van Evert, Daniel Wallach, Jacques Wery,
and Arezki Zerourou
Introduction
Several simulation tools allow the impact of agricultural management on production
activities in specific environments to be studied (e.g. Brisson et al.
2003
; Keating
et al.
2003
; Jones et al.
2003
; Stockle et al.
2003
; Van Ittersum et al.
2003)
. Such
tools are specialized, to different extents, to one or more specific production activities:
arable crops or cropping systems, grassland, orchards, agro-forestry, livestock etc.
Their outputs often only include estimates of a restricted range of system externalities
which may have a negative environmental impact; these may include, for example,
nitrogen leaching or the fate of pesticides. Very often, the structure of such systems
neither allows for an easy plug-in of models for new agricultural production activities,
nor the use of different approaches for the simulation of processes via alternate
formulations. Furthermore, documentation of such tools may not be up-to-date, and
may not follow a single standard, which makes it difficult to access information.
