An agent-based model of farmer behaviour to explain the limited adaptability of Flemish agriculture

•An agent-based model is built to replicate the evolution of the Flemish livestock production sector between 2001 and 2011.•A heterogeneous behaviour model allows to calibrate three elements of non-adaptive behaviour.•To explain historic production levels, it has to be assumed that a proportion of the farmers is not profit-maximising.•Future transition scenarios have to account for slow change and a strong resistance to market-based adaptation.

Transition projects have been implemented for Flemish agriculture since 2003, but these did not enable a transformation of the agricultural sector. This paper looks at pre-transition scenarios that have been collectively designed by stakeholders of the agricultural sector in 2002. These foresaw decreases in the regional animal stocks in Flanders. However, the real evolution of the sector did not reveal such a decrease. It is assumed that the individual adaptive behaviour of farmers can explain the unexpected stability of the Flemish agricultural sector. A detailed agent-based model has been built to replicate the past evolution, accounting for structural diversity of farmers, heterogeneity in behaviour, and natural resource constraints. The results indicate that different forms of rigidity in the individual behaviour of farmers slow down the adaptation of the agricultural sector. Future transition scenarios should account for these elements in order not to overestimate the speed of change in the sector.