One function of the agriculture is to contribute to landscape conservation by maintaining open landscapes and creating landscape diversity. Agricultural policy should sustain this function. In Switzerland, like in other European countries, three main complexity-dimensions hamper policy...

Interviews with Swiss farmers lead to the hypotheses that production decisions, also in crop growing, are not made annually, but similarly to investment decisions in the long run. This hypothesis is backed by non-parametric time-series analysis for Switzerland and Germany. This creates a...