111 EAAE-IAAE Seminar ‘Small Farms: decline or persistence’ University of Kent, Canterbury, UK 26 th -27 th June 2009 Integrating small farms in agent based models Norbert Röder Institute of Rural Studies Von Thünen Institute Bundesallee 50, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany Norbert.roeder@vti.bund.de and Jochen Kantelhardt Institute of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management Technische Universität München Alte Akademie 13, 85354 Freising, Germany kantelhardt@wzw.tum.de Copyright 2009 by Norbert Röder and Jochen Kantelhardt. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means, provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies. Abstract: In German agriculture structural change is mainly a result of the outmigration of smaller farms from the sector. The decisions of these farmers to leave or stay in the sector, are not based solely on financial data and market expectations. Other aspects are important such as the preservation of the cultural landscape, the continuation of the family tradition, or self-realisation. Only if these goals are adequately integrated into land use models, one can hope that the type and magnitude of reactions predicted by the model will be similar to that observed in reality. The main goal of this paper is to present a model approach that allows for the integration of non- monetary aspects into an agri-economic land use model. The approach is tested for a sample of 20 farms located in a municipality in the Bavarian Alps. The results show that the choice of the farmers’ attitude has a larger impact on results than the peculiarities of the policy scenario. This holds especially for the emerging farm structure but also for the general land use intensity. Keywords: Farmer attitude, linear programming, agent based modelling, land market JEL codes : Q12, Q15, R14