Crop Livestock Enterprise Model (CLEM)

The Crop Livestock Enterprise Model (CLEM) model is a bio-economic model that can guide whole-of-farm decision-making. It integrates livestock, pasture, and crop production with labour and economic resources, simulating farm enterprises at a range of scales, from large agribusinesses to subsistence smallholdings.

CLEM can account for and output multiple variables including crops, animals, economics, residue, products, labour, nutrition, feed, water and greenhouse gases. It has built-in user-friendly graphics.

CLEM has the potential to:

• Examine long term farming system production risk and variability under different allocations of labour, crop and livestock resources
• Show the overall benefits or costs of management changes such as: increased rumen efficiency; fly strike vaccines and chemical solutions; pest and disease control options
• Consider the effect of new digital technologies such as virtual fencing or measuring feed
• Inform policy makers and industry bodies about the likely effects of changes to farm-scale management at a district or regional level

CLEM is based on the principals of other models (Integrated Analysis Tool – IAT and North Australian Beef Systems Analysis – NABSA) and uses outputs from other models (e.g. crops yields outputs from the Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) and native pastures from GRASP). The model is being developed in the APSIM NextGen framework – designed to be flexible, extendable and a useful tool for researchers. It operates on a monthly time-step.

CLEM can be downloaded as a part of the APSIM NextGen model. Registration and download for APSIM NextGen is available from here.

See the CLEM website for more information.

Contact clem@csiro.au for more information.