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...

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...

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...

In the current debate on climate protection, agricultural production has become a focal point of interest. This study introduces the climate effectiveness of agricultural management of peat-soils. Agriculture on peatland demands a water-level drawdown that causes aerobe degradation of the soils....

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...

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...

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 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...