HORIZON-CL6-2027-03-GOVERNANCE-01: Farm decisions under price, yield and water-cost risk: an agro-economic model tested on a working farm

A farmer commits to perennial crops for decades, but prices, yields and input costs change every year. The useful question is not only which plan earns most in an average year, but how each plan holds up across the years that may actually come, and what it costs to protect against the bad ones.

I manage Yatir Farms, a large irrigated farm in the Arad Valley, in the Israeli Negev, growing wine grapes, almonds, apricots and field crops on recycled and fresh water bought at different prices. As part of my PhD with the Volcani Institute (Agricultural Research Organization, Israel) I built an agro-economic model for long-term crop allocation and seasonal irrigation decisions. It links water to yield for each crop through production functions built from eleven years of farm records, and tests each plan against thousands of possible years of crop prices, yields, water prices and water supply. It reports the expected profit of a plan, its spread and probability of loss, the gap to a plan chosen with perfect foresight, and which sources of risk drive the result.

Role in the consortium: partner, on the farm-economics side. Added value: a working model for farm-level decisions under uncertainty, comparing alternative plans by expected profit and risk, not only by average-year profit; a real farm as a case study, with eleven years of records, where strategies can be tested with the people who make the decisions; field experience in managing input-cost and supply risk (water from several sources at different prices); links to Israeli growers and sector organisations.

Looking for: a coordinator or consortium preparing a GOVERNANCE-01 proposal; partners in risk management tools (insurance, risk sharing, derisking instruments), behavioural and social science on farmer decision-making, and other farms or living labs where the model could be applied. Also relevant to GOVERNANCE-02 and FARM2FORK-01.