The first step in agricultural adaptation is understanding of the local farming systems, the socio-economic context, ongoing adaptation activities, policy support and resources available. Besides identifying and collecting available information on these topics, it is important to foster communication and raise awareness with stakeholders.

AgMIP activities and resources
Every regional and national study starts with a description of the challenges in agriculture and food security. The Impacts Explorer also explains the methodology and techniques adopted to acquire this information, including the stakeholder activities that are essential in the adaptation process.

The aim of this step is to develop a comprehensive picture of current and future climate change impacts on agricultural production and consequent vulnerabilities in food security. Involvement of all potentially affected stakeholders is necessary in order to develop an accurate understanding of vulnerabilities.

AgMIP activities and resources
In regional integrated assessments, climate change impacts on the agricultural system of a region are simulated, for two situations:

• first, the sensitivity of current agricultural production systems (so assuming that the production system does not change from its current state) is assessed;
• second, the impact of climate change on future agricultural production systems is assessed. These will differ from the current production system due to developments in the agricultural sector.

Impact indicators may include crop and livestock yields, value of production, poverty, or net farm or household income. These indicators are included in the Impacts Dashboard.

National impact assessments are based on data, modelling results, formal procedures and expert judgment on agricultural production systems and future changes, for all regions of a country.

In this step potential adaptation options are developed and relevant actions are identified. Adaptation options generally require a broad range of actions implemented on the ground, e.g. measures related to the farming system itself, measures that build adaptive capacity (e.g. knowledge creation and sharing information, creating supportive institutional frameworks) or measures that establish management systems and supportive mechanisms (e.g. better land management planning).

AgMIP activities and resources
The AgMIP methodology includes the development of Representative Agricultural Pathways (RAPs) to portray future agricultural production systems and emissions in scenarios. These represent “green” sustainable future scenarios and “grey”, non-sustainable scenarios. The narratives help to explore how the specific risks and opportunities can be addressed.  The trends in the RAPs are quantified and the data are used as input for the crop/livestock and economic simulation models. RAPs are developed for national and sub-national (regional) levels.

Adaptation options are discussed with stakeholders.  The resulting range of solutions are the Adaptation Packages. They describe cultivar, management, and agricultural sector policies specifically designed to increase production and resilience as climate changes.

Adaptation options are selected and prioritized in an adaptation strategy. These are translated into action and the adaptation measures are put into practice. Stakeholder involvement is essential for successful implementation. One of the challenges in this phase is to make sure that regional information is adopted at national level, so national policies are supportive to local needs. Implementation relates to putting adaptation policies into effect; the policies are translated into action and the adaptation measures are put into practice.

AgMIP activities and resources
The implementation of adaptation packages is not part of the AgMIP-process. However, feedback on the modeling results and RAPs is obtained in stakeholder meetings.  Reports on the stakeholder meetings can be found in the regional and national study descriptions.

The overarching goal of monitoring, evaluation and reviewing is to enable new information and lessons learned to shape future decisions within an iterative policy and agenda setting cycle. It also helps communicating the processes and outcomes of adaptation.

AgMIP activities and resources
Evaluation and review of the effectiveness of the adaptation packages is currently not part of the AgMIP-methodology. However the feedback of stakeholders to the AgMIP research outcomes and methodology is an important part of the process and used to improve results in every phase.