How Much Farm Succession is Needed to Ensure Resilience of Farming Systems?

This study uses agent-based modelling to study the effects of the availability of potential successors in two agricultural regions, Flanders in Belgium and the Altmark in Germany. The analysis provides no indication that considerably fewer successors would threaten the ability of the farming systems to ensure an adequate provision of private and public goods. In both study regions, a lack of successors leads to adaptations which create new opportunities for other farms and, in Flanders, to higher economic prosperity at the regional level.