Farm simulation: A tool for evaluating the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and the adaptation of dairy production to climate change

Farms both produce greenhouse gas emissions that drive human-induced climate change and are impacted by that climate change. Process-level modeling at the farm scale provides a method for evaluating strategies for both mitigating emissions and adapting to climate change. The Integrated Farm System Model (IFSM) simulates representative crop, beef or dairy farms over many years of weather to predict performance, economics and environmental impacts including various gas emissions and a farm-gate life cycle assessment of carbon, energy, water and reactive nitrogen footprints of the feed, meat or milk produced (Rotz et al., 2014). IFSM provides a useful tool for evaluating farm emissions and mitigation strategies and the effects of climate variability on the sustainabiity of production systems under a changing climate.