Can the farm survive the transition?

Most drought-resilience practices cost money or yield first and pay back later, on a scale of years. This is a stress test, not a forecast: it asks whether the farm gets through the dip and the bad years, not what the profit will be.

Defaults are the measured figures in our notes, each with country and year below the table. Most are UK figures because UK bodies publish openly; Mediterranean and Eastern European costs largely do not exist yet, and we do not convert and hope. Change any number to your own. Figures are per hectare in whatever currency you type.

What this cannot tell you

Most of the techniques in the library are not modelled here, and each says so on its own page. These are worth naming, because the reasons differ, and one of them is a choice rather than a gap:

• Swales, keyline and contour earthworks — No European farm-scale trials and no farm-scale construction or maintenance costs were found.
• Farm ponds and water retention landscapes — Only programme-level costs exist (€5/m³ rural, Slovakia 2019); no excavator, lining or desilting figures.
• Ollas and subsurface drip — Installation costs found are US-only and not published here; European figures are missing.
• Biochar — The cost is known, €400–600 a tonne at the 10–30 t/ha trials use, but no European margin gain is evidenced. We will not invent a benefit to fill a calculator.
• Mycorrhizal inoculation — Cheap per hectare and unevidenced: no costed European margin gain exists to model.
• Hydrogels and superabsorbent polymers — Neither half exists. No European price per kilogram, and no evidenced European margin effect.
• Satellite drought monitoring — No evidenced European margin effect, and at about €5 a hectare the question is not whether the farm survives it.
• Precision irrigation — A choice, not a gap. A European water price now exists, €0.32 a cubic metre in one Murcian district in 2026, but it varies by an order of magnitude across Europe and the charging method varies between volume and area. A default here would mislead more readers than it helped, so the arithmetic sits on the page instead.

The model is deliberately simple: one margin figure, a fixed drought pattern, effects applied to gross margin. It ignores prices moving, the straw-price spike in drought years, and the cash-flow timing within a year. Its job is to show whether the transition years and a bad year or two arriving early would break the business. If the cumulative line dips further than your reserves or your lender allow, that is the finding.

Where the defaults come from

All of these figures, plus every other cost and subsidy figure the site holds and the gaps we would like help with, are collected on the costs page.

No-till + residue retention (arable, dry rainfed)

• Yield dip in years 1–2, % (default 5.7): No-till alone costs 5.7% yield across 5,463 paired observations (global meta-analysis); with residue retention and rotation in dry rainfed climates the penalty disappears.
• Year the dip has faded to zero (default 5): Parity is reached at 3–10 years in long-term trials; pick where you expect to land.
• Establishment saving per ha per year (default 138): £138/ha derived from NAAC contractor rates (UK, 2025-26): plough + power harrow + drill £215.82 vs direct drilling £77.63. Upper bound: excludes the herbicide that replaces cultivation.
• Contractor direct-drill pass per ha (0 if you own a drill) (default 0): £77.63/ha (UK, NAAC 2025-26) if you have no drill. Eco-schemes do not fund the drill; Pillar 2 investment aid may.

Cover crops (arable)

• Net margin effect per ha per year (default -75): −£150/ha over two cash crops, i.e. about −£75/ha/yr, gross margin reduced in 95% of situations (UK, AHDB Maxi Cover Crop). Applies above roughly 700 mm.
• Extra cash-crop yield loss if under ~700 mm, % (default 0): Set to 11–12 if your rainfall is under roughly 700 mm: cover crops cut the following crop 11% in temperate drylands and 12% in dry climates. We apply it to gross margin, which understates the hit.
• Eco-scheme payment per ha per year (default 0): Type your own national rate. They are set per country and only definitive after the season — Poland paid ≈€102/ha in 2025, France pays nothing specific for arable cover crops. See the funding page.

Mulching with own pruning residue (woody crops)

• Extra cost per ha per year (default 0): Pruning residue is already on the farm; chipping and spreading are the only costs and no European figure was found. Enter your own.
• Share of the drought-year hit avoided, % (default 25): ASSUMPTION, not a measurement. Mulch raised precipitation storage efficiency 23.9% and water-use efficiency up to 60% in trials, but no European study quantifies the yield-stability effect. Set it low. For a measured range in woody crops: on five rainfed almond farms (Spain, 300–400 mm, 2016–18) net revenue per ha/yr was compost €1,349, tillage €1,126, green manure €636, unmown no-till €415 — see the case studies page.
• Eco-scheme payment per ha per year (default 0): France pays €62.05/ha whole-farm for 95% inter-row cover (2025); Spain €59–185/ha by slope (2025 campaign). Type the rate that applies to you.

Agroforestry, alley cropping (arable)

• Crop yield as % of sole crop (default 71): European meta-analysis, 13 studies, 267 observations: alley-cropping crop yield averaged 71% of sole crop. Silvopasture (dehesa) showed 102%.
• Establishment cost per ha, year 1 (default 4353): No European establishment cost was found. €4,353/ha is what Czechia's CAP pays to establish (2025), used only as an order of magnitude.
• Share of the drought-year hit avoided, % (default 0): ASSUMPTION. Shelter cuts evapotranspiration 10–30% over 10–20 belt heights, but no trial converts that to a margin effect. Default off.
• Year tree revenue starts (0 = never in 10 years) (default 0): Timber and fruit are real but slow; the notes have no European revenue figure. Default off.
• Tree revenue per ha per year once started (default 0): Enter your own; nothing in the notes supports a default.

Compost on woody crops (own or bought)

• Compost cost per ha per year (material + haulage + spreading) (default 0): 0 if made from your own prunings and manure. Bought compost ranges from about €50 to €400/ha at 20 t/ha depending on distance to the plant: €0–14/t material (EU, ~2008), €50/t + VAT ex works (Spain, 2025, vendor), spreading £2.50–3/t and haulage 25–70% of delivered cost (UK, vendor quoting ADAS).
• Net revenue gain per ha per year once established (default 223): On five rainfed almond farms (Spain, 300–400 mm, 2016–18) compost gave €1,349/ha/yr against €1,126 under tillage, a €223 gain, with labour €396 vs €386.50 included. One crop, one region, three years; set to 0 if that is not your system.
• Years before the gain appears (default 2): Nitrogen from compost is 5–15% available in year 1; structure and infiltration follow two or three applications. The almond trials measured over three years.
• Share of the drought-year hit avoided, % (default 0): ASSUMPTION. Soil carbon buffers bad years (yield plateau ~2% SOC, Oldfield 2019) but no European trial converts compost into a drought-year margin effect. Default off.