About 30 percent of the world’s soil carbon is stored in peat soils. Peatland’s functional principle of carbon storage greatly depends on management strategies. Therefore agricultural peatland use becomes a focal point of interest in the current debate on climate protection. Agricultural...

In Folge bestehender Produktionsrichtlinien und -auflagen kommt es im Zuge der Umstellung auf biologische Wirtschaftsweise häufig zu einem erhöhten Investitionsbedarf in den landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben. Diese werden meist mit Unterstützung der Investitionsförderung (M121) durchgeführt....

In comparison to flatland agriculture mountainous agriculture is often shaped by small plot sizes, unfavourable climatic conditions and steep slopes. All those conditions make it extraordinarily expensive to implement new technologies and to modernise farms. Consequently our research hypothesis...

According to the concept of ecosystem services, agriculture not only provides commodities but also cultural and regulating services. While it is easy to value commodity production by market prices, the valuation of cultural and regulating services is complex because of their public good...

Especially in environmentally sensitive agricultural landscapes, agriculture cannot define its aims by itself - it has to account for a number of demands of different groups of society. For example, agriculture is expected to produce food and at the same time contribute to the protection of...

Our study examines the potential developments of cultural landscapes, taking into consideration various economic and social conditions (scenarios). The study takes place in three project regions which represent typical landscapes in Southern Germany and Austria. In each project area, the...

Agriculture provides commodities and has an influence on the environment. However, even if the value of agricultural production is easy to evaluate, it is difficult to estimate the efficiency of agricultural production at site level. Furthermore, the valuation of environmental impact is complex....

Agricultural landscapes are important elements of European culture. There is an increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes represent economic assets; not only because of the production of agricultural commodities, but also by offering significant opportunities for the socioeconomic...

For applications in agricultural and environmental economics, complex ecological systems are often oversimplified to the extent that ecologists rarely consider model results valid. Recursive optimization of complex systems represents an alternative, but requires strong assumptions regarding time...

Increasing carbon dioxide emissions and related climate effects require mitigation strategies, thereby also emissions caused by agriculture are brought into the focus of political debate. In particular organic soil cultivation, inducing significant CO2 emissions is being discussed more and more....