Anticipating agricultural climate shocks: leveraging science to increase policy ambition, farmers’ resilience and food security in Southeastern Europe and the EU

The Augures! project uses an integrated modelling framework—combining seasonal forecasts, crop models, and economic models—to help European farmers and policymakers manage climate risks. A 2024 stakeholder workshop in Athens highlighted the need for context-specific, transparent, and actionable climate data to address structural vulnerabilities in the EU agricultural sector, particularly for small-scale farmers. The project aims to expand its analysis of maize and wheat to Greece, France, Romania, and Hungary in 2025, while developing a 'project-to-product' roadmap to transform scientific outputs into a user-friendly decision-support service.

• The EU agricultural sector is highly vulnerable to climate change and weather variability, yet it lacks integrated policy solutions and sufficient public and private funding for resilience programmes.
• Small-scale farmers are especially susceptible to interannual variability and often lack the financial resources and organized information necessary to implement sustainable resilience plans.
• Current seasonal forecasts can predict average weather conditions and crop productivity up to 3-4 months in advance, which is useful during the growing season but insufficient for pre-planting decisions.
• To avoid maladaptation, resilience strategies must be tailored to specific environmental, socio-economic, and governance contexts rather than applied generically.
• There is a critical need to translate quantitative scientific data into actionable recommendations and user-friendly services, potentially using storytelling and collaboration with local governments to scale access.
• The Augures! project's integrated modelling approach uses seasonal forecasts to inform crop models (predicting yields, irrigation, and harvest times), which then feed into economic models to evaluate socio-economic impacts and policy trade-offs.

APA

Climate Strategies (2024). Anticipating agricultural climate shocks: leveraging science to increase policy ambition, farmers’ resilience and food security in Southeastern Europe and the EU. https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Augures-Workshop-Report.pdf

Chicago

Climate Strategies. Anticipating agricultural climate shocks: leveraging science to increase policy ambition, farmers’ resilience and food security in Southeastern Europe and the EU. 2024. https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Augures-Workshop-Report.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Strategies |title=Anticipating agricultural climate shocks: leveraging science to increase policy ambition, farmers’ resilience and food security in Southeastern Europe and the EU |date=2024 |url=https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Augures-Workshop-Report.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatestrategies2024anticipating, author = {{Climate Strategies}}, title = {{Anticipating agricultural climate shocks: leveraging science to increase policy ambition, farmers’ resilience and food security in Southeastern Europe and the EU}}, institution = {Climate Strategies}, year = {2024}, url = {https://climatestrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Augures-Workshop-Report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }