Scenario analysis as a foresight tool in agriculture

Abstract

Complexity and uncertainty are key issues in exploring future developments. Moreover, although the future cannot be predicted, it is clear that certain decisions/actions can influence the future in desired directions. In this respect, planners are being challenged to focus on the development of new approaches and tools, capable of dealing with complexity and uncertainty, in order to be able to effectively support policy makers in making more knowledgeable decisions to achieve desirable future outcomes. The focus of the present paper is on the development of such an approach, i.e., a backcasting policy-scenario design approach, used for the study of the future developments in EU agriculture in 2020. In this respect, the paper presents the main stream of methodological approaches for scenario building, i.e., forecasting and backcasting approaches; it elaborates on the steps involved in the backcasting policy-scenario design framework; and it follows these steps by adopting the backcasting policy-scenario design framework in the AG2020 EU project on the future of EU agriculture in 2020.