Farms adaptation to changes in flood risk: a management approach

Creating flood expansion areas e.g. for the protection of urban areas from flooding involves a localised increase in risk which may require farmers to be compensated for crop damage or other losses. With this in mind, the paper sets out the approach used to study the problem and gives results obtained from a survey of farms liable to flooding in central France. The approach is based on a study of decisions made by farmers in situations of uncertainty, using the concept of ‘model of action’. The results show that damage caused to farming areas by flooding should be considered both at field level and at farm level. The damage caused to the field depends on the flood itself, the fixed characteristics of the field, and the plant species cultivated. However, the losses to the farm taken as a whole can differ considerably from those for the flooded field, due to ‘knock-on’ effects on farm operations which depend on the internal organization, the availability of production resources, and the farmer's objectives, both for the farm as a whole and for its individual enterprises. Three main strategies regarding possible flood events were identified. Reasons for choosing one of these include the way the farmer perceives the risk and the size of the area liable to flooding. Finally, the formalisation of farm system management in the face of uncertainty, especially due to flooding, enables compensation to be calculated for farmers whose land is affected by the creation of flood expansion areas.