Weathering the Storms: Mapping France’s Agricultural Future with Machine Learning

High-resolution crop risk and adaptation prioritization

The Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), established as an official research organization for the French government, sought a partner to conduct a first of its kind analysis into the cost of adaptation in the agricultural sector in France. 

finres produced the first ever high-resolution, geo-specific crop risk and adaptation prioritization analysis for the French agricultural sector. The study investigated the investment levels necessary to adapt the French agricultural sector to different levels of global warming in France considering the government’s policy for food sovereignty. Key findings included:

• The impact of climate change over the medium term on yields is projected to be limited on average but rare and exceptional losses could become more frequent, becoming a new norm for specific crops and areas.
• The effect of adaptation technologies and practices could reduce agricultural losses during rare and exceptional harvests by more than 20 percentage points. With increasing temperatures, the beneficial effects of adaptation are multiplied by 20 to 40 depending on technologies and cultures.
• The benefits associated with adaptation can be calculated to as much as €600 million per year, based on the typical case study regions and crops studied. These adaptation benefits could increase between 20-25% between warming of 2.0°C to 4.0°C to €700 million per year . 

Using machine learning to predict climate impacts on crop yields

The research employed a sophisticated machine learning approach to predict the impact of climate change on crop yields in France. Comprehensive data preparation allowed the identification of distinct climate zones according to their historical temperature and precipitation regimes, while the core of the methodology involved training and validating machine learning models, particularly random forest algorithms, using historical crop yield and climate data. These models were then applied to various global warming scenarios to predict future crop yields. To better represent the consequences of extreme events, advanced statistical techniques were applied. A key feature of the study was the integration of adaptation technologies and practices into the model, simulating their potential effects on crop yield and therefore resilience. 

The study also looked at the overall macroeconomic benefits associated with adaptation, given the anticipated reduction in other subsidy and insurance schemes, as well as the cost of implementing adaptation measures, considering the different public and private sources for this investment. Today, the French government allocates every year more than EUR 1.2 billion in support to the agricultural to cope with the consequences of climate-related disasters on the sector, in the form for subsidy for crop insurance, tax exemptions, etc. A central conclusion was that each degree of extra  global warming experienced leads to the progressive worsening of the consequences for French farmers, making adaptation technologies and practices increasingly valuable.

Economic analysis of optimal climate adaptation strategies

I4CE was commissioned by the Climate Change Adaptation Office of the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Agence de la transition écologique (ADEME) and the Commissariat général au développement durable (CGDD) to investigate the economic implications of different adaptation scenarios corresponding to different levels of warming. This research was commissioned to inform the preparation of the third National Adaptation Plan.

The process culminated in a thorough economic and financial analysis of these adaptation strategies, providing a detailed view of both the challenges posed by climate change and the optimal solutions available to be pursued by the agricultural sector. The research was guided by the review and advice of experts drawn from ADEME, Inovia Lands INRAE, MASA, MTE, Solagro, SupAgro Montpellier, and Terres Inovia, and was widely covered in the national, regional, and farming media.

Equipping farmers with knowledge through AgHorizon

The data underpinning this project, augmented using state-of-the-art statistical techniques, were made available to farmers and financial institutions supporting the agricultural sector in AgHorizon, an application freely available to farmers in France, equipping them with the knowledge on how they can prepare for climate change. 

To learn more about AgHorizon and other solutions being developed by finres to make farming more resilient to climate change, get in touch to schedule an introductory meeting.