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....

Using a significant amount of public funding, large-scale nature-conservation projects in Germany aim to secure and develop ecologically valuable areas and endangered habitats and species. Due to the substantial land-use changes accompanying these projects, their implementation can also have...

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...

The provision of commodities for feed, food and energy production is the main task of the agricultural sector but it is obvious that agriculture is also essential for the viability of most rural areas. Although the consequences of agriculture on the landscape are extensively described, the...

The effects of policy supported farm investments on structural change in agriculture have been studied rarely. The heterogeneity of farms and the problem of self-selection are challenging the evaluation of treatments in agriculture. Econometric methods can help to overcome these problems. In...

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....

The aim of land consolidation projects is to improve the competitiveness of agriculture. Since land consolidation is subsidised by national and European means, the effectiveness of such measures must be determined. The following paper presents a method which makes it possible to calculate the...

The Common European Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform not only has an impact on agriculture but also has significant effects on nature and the environment. This is specifically caused by decoupling direct payments from agricultural production, which will increase the market orientation of...