The model farm conceptThe regionali

The model farm concept

The regionalisation concept for the simulation output of the EU-Rotate_N model (Rahn et al., 2007b) is based on model farms. Model farms are theoretical concepts which represent real vegetable farms. All model farms consist of a number of fields of variable size, hosting different crop rotations that are considered typical for the area and the farm type. At the next level, a model region includes a number of model farms, which represent a real region’s variability with regard to the size of the annual vegetable production area (APA) and the type of crops they produce. Model farms are devised on the basis of vegetable production data at national or regional level. They are designed such that the sum of APA for the region’s most important vegetable crops (APAcrop ≥ 3% of APAtotal) is used as a target to optimise (i) the field sizes, (ii) the farm-type distribution and (iii) the composition of the crop rotations. The algorithm for this optimisation also considers the frequency of the respective vegetable crop in the rotation and the length of the rotation.