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This paper presents an empirical analysis of the human appropriation of aboveground net primary production (aHANPP) in Hungary in the years 1961–2005. In this period aboveground HANPP dropped from 67% to 49% of the potential vegetation's NPP. The trajectory was not smooth, but aboveground HANPP fluctuated with changes in factors affecting agricultural production conditions. Both aboveground net primary production (aNPP) of the prevailing vegetation and harvested aNPP increased during the socialist regime, dropped when the system collapsed and has shown considerable fluctuations since. We discuss the development of aboveground HANPP and the Hungarian land use system in the context of socioeconomic changes during three distinct phases: (1) industrialisation of agriculture (1961–1989), (2) regime collapse (1989–1993) and (3) restructuring of a new economy (1993–2005). Within these periods, different driving factors influenced aboveground HANPP and its constituents. In the phase of industrialisation, mechanisation and agrochemical inputs reduced aHANPP while harvested amounts of biomass increased progressively. In the second phase, political and economic circumstances devastated production conditions resulting in a decline of productivity of actual vegetation and a temporary rise in aboveground HANPP. During the last twelve years, industrialisation patterns of agricultural production recovered. The restructuring of inefficient agricultural production systems raised harvest at moderate levels of agricultural inputs, while climatic conditions intimidated high yield and harvest security. The paper discusses the effect of different economic and political regimes and of major socioeconomic restructuring on the development of the land use system, biomass production and aboveground HANPP. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The debate among ecologists on the optimal number of reserve sites under a fixed maximum total reserve area—the single large or several small (SLOSS) problem—has so far neglected the economic aspects of the problem. This paper argues that economic considerations can affect the optimal number and size of reserve sites and should therefore be taken into consideration in the SLOSS discussion. The paper presents a tractable analytical model to determine the socially optimal number of reserve sites to be allocated in a farming area under a fixed total reserve area, taking the opportunity costs of nature conservation (in this case, agricultural profits) into consideration. Furthermore, the effect of land trade and related transaction costs on the socially optimal number of reserve sites is analyzed. The analysis suggests that in the presence of diminishing returns to farming area, the socially optimal number of reserve sites (which maximizes social welfare) is generally larger than the ecologically optimal number (which maximizes an ecological objective such as population viability). When the opportunity costs of conservation can be offset by land transactions, however, the socially optimal number of reserve sites might be closer to the ecological optimum. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Low participation rates by farmers in voluntary agri-environmental programs may depend on rationally bounded ex ante estimates of the negative effect of program enrollment on farm income. Uncertainty and the presence of information transaction costs may lead to the use of heuristics by farmers to reduce adoption decision costs. This paper describes how LENNART, a net-based decision support system (DSS), has been designed to exploit the use of heuristics and provide low cost access to information. The model has been developed to evaluate the effects of agronomic measures on farm income and on the leaching of nutrients from cultivated fields. A subsidy program for catch crop cultivation in Southern Sweden served as the basis for development of the DSS and is used throughout the paper for purposes of illustration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Conservation agriculture (CA), which consists of minimum soil disturbance, crop residue retention and crop rotation, is claimed to generate a number of agronomic, economic and environmental benefits. Recognising these potential benefits, CA is widely promoted in efforts towards sustainable agricultural intensification. However, there has been an intense debate about its suitability in smallholder farming environments, and this has stimulated a growing interest in the adoption and impacts of CA technologies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Using survey data from maize-growing households in nine SSA countries, this paper seeks to add to the extant literature by examining the drivers and welfare impacts of individual and combined implementation of the three components of CA. We employ inverse-probability-weighting regression-adjustment and propensity score matching with multiple treatment estimators. Overall, results show that adoption of a CA technology significantly increases total household income and income per adult equivalent. Disaggregating the CA components, we find that adoption of the components in combination is associated with larger income gains than when the components are adopted in isolation, and the largest effect is achieved when households implement the three practices jointly. Nevertheless, implementation of the full CA package among the sampled households is very low, with an average adoption rate of 8%. We identify key factors that might spur increased adoption, including education, secure land rights, and access to institutional support services. Results further show that the determinants and impacts of the CA components vary considerably among the study countries, suggesting location specificity of CA. Our results are consistent across alternative estimators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Soviet Russia, an agricultural directive could pass 30 management levels on its way from the central government to the farm. Central planning impeded the adaptation of agricultural practices to the local social-ecological contexts and virtually eliminated self-accountability in agriculture. Focusing on contemporary Russia, the paper examines how the state currently influences farmers' land management and how this subtle mode of intervention aligns with the local context. Qualitative research in the Western Siberian Grain Belt reveals that the state-designed institutions guide land management in a politically desirable direction. They aim for virtually unlimited agricultural growth and largely misalign with the social-ecological conditions of grain farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High Nature Value (HNV) farmland is declining in the EU, with negative consequences for biodiversity conservation. Agri-environment schemes implemented under the Common Agricultural Policy have addressed this problem, with recent proposals advocating direct support to HNV farming systems. However, research is lacking on the economics of HNV farming, which makes it difficult to set the level and type of support that ensure its sustainability. In this paper, we focused on a Special Protection Area for steppe bird conservation, analysing how economic incentives, biophysical and structural features govern the choice of farming system. We found that persistence of the traditional farming system important for steppe birds was associated with economic incentives, resistance to change, and good quality soils, whereas a shift to specialised livestock production systems was favoured by higher rainfall and less fragmented farms. A supply curve built using the choice model predicted that the proportion of traditional farming increased from 20% to 80% of the landscape, when economic incentives increased from about 100€/ha to 160€/ha. Overall, our study highlights the dependence of HNV farming systems on economic incentives, and provides a framework to assess the effects of alternative policy and market scenarios to sustain farmland landscapes promoting biodiversity conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The world is banking on a major increase in food production, if the dietary needs and food preferences of an increasing, and increasingly rich, population are to be met. This requires the further expansion of modern agriculture, but modern agriculture rests on a small number of highly productive crops and its expansion has led to a significant loss of global biodiversity. Ecologists have shown that biodiversity loss results in lower plant productivity, while agricultural economists have linked biodiversity loss on farms with increasing variability of crop yields, and sometimes lower mean yields. In this paper we consider the macro-economic consequences of the continued expansion of particular forms of intensive, modern agriculture, with a focus on how the loss of biodiversity affects food production. We employ a quantitative, structurally estimated model of the global economy, which jointly determines economic growth, population and food demand, agricultural innovations and land conversion. We show that even small effects of agricultural expansion on productivity via biodiversity loss might be sufficient to warrant a moratorium on further land conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using traditional methods, this paper gave assessment to the extent of sandy desertification and the changes of land use in eight counties in Horqin Sandy Land over the period 1980–2010. A coupling model was established on the base of general Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model to better understand the roles of economic growth and other factors to sandy desertification in an integrated framework. To avoid the bias owing to the data discordance and the autocorrelation in time series data, Unit Root Test was applied and an ARDL model was established to improve the EKC model. The results showed that there was a positive linear correlation between the extremely severe sandy desertification per capita and the real agricultural GDP per capita in the short run, while there was a Kuznets Curve in the long run, showing the effect of economic growth as both the pressure on land and the capability to alleviate the risk of sandy desertification in different phases. The effect of economic growth on sandy desertification was greatly influenced by exogenous factors, including strategy factors, climatic factors and the extent of sandy desertification itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in ecosystem services provided by agroecosystems has grown over the last decades with research focusing on the type of environmental, economic and social benefits delivered by agroecosystems. Researchers suggest that, besides the provisioning of food, fuel, and fiber, agroecosystems provide habitat, cultural, and regulating services. One type of agroecosystem that remains relatively unexplored from an ecosystem service perspective is home gardens. In this paper, we aim at advancing the understanding of the value of home gardens by conducting an assessment of home gardens ecosystem services. For the empirical analysis we use home gardens in Vall Fosca (Catalan Pyrenees). We identify and characterize the most important ecosystem services provided by home gardens, and conduct a valuation of the social importance of home garden ecosystem services. The methodological approach for this work included an in-depth literature review, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, a valuation questionnaire, and a scientific panel consultation. We identified and characterized 19 ecosystem functions and related services. According to our informants, home gardens provide a large set of ecosystem services, being cultural services the category most valued. We found that the most important ecosystem services provided by home gardens differ from those provided by other types of agroecosystems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The role of ecosystem services in agro-ecosystems is often poorly understood by those in agricultural production. Yet food production, itself an ecosystem service, is critical to the survival of humanity and dominates much of the world's terrestrial and marine environments. There is a need to address the under-estimation of ecosystem services in farmland and develop concepts, policies and methods to evaluate them. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework and consult with agro-industry experts to identify the impacts of different agricultural practices on ecosystem services. We also identify the ecosystem services crucial to the long term functioning of agroecosystems in Australia. Our results demonstrate that the regulating ecosystem services are the most relevant to all of the agriculture sectors we examined. Most concern is the recognised impact that the agricultural sector has had on ecosystem services provision. Results from our survey indicate that the agricultural sector in Australia negatively impacts on all regulating and supporting ecosystem services, despite the importance of these services in the process of agricultural production. We conclude with various policy arguments for better and more explicit recognition of ecosystem services in the management of agroecosystems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper aims to study the effects of reducing pesticide use by farmers in the arable sector in France and the feasibility of a policy target of reducing pesticide use by half. The originality of the approach is to combine statistical data and expert knowledge to describe low-input alternative techniques at the national level. These data are used in a mathematical programming model to simulate the effect on land use, production and farmers'' income of achieving different levels of pesticide reduction. The results show that reducing pesticide use by 30% could be possible without reducing farmers'' income. We also estimate the levels of tax on pesticides necessary to achieve different levels of reduction of pesticide use and the effect of an incentive mechanism combining a pesticide tax with subsidies for low-input techniques. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses a farm level panel data from Ethiopia and a comprehensive empirical strategy to investigate the contribution of crop biodiversity on food production. We find that increasing the number of crop variety increases production. This result is stronger when rainfall level is lower. Moreover, the productivity analysis is complemented with the study of the determinants of farm level crop biodiversity. Empirical results suggest that rainfall, tenure security and household endowments tend to govern crop diversity decisions at the farm level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) is an indicator of the human domination of ecosystems that measures to which extent human activities alter the amount of biomass available each year in ecosystems. This paper analyses the development of aboveground HANPP (aHANPP) in Spain for the period from 1955 to 2003. During this period, Spain's agriculture underwent a transition from a largely pre-industrial to a highly intensified production system. Changes in land use patterns include a reduction of cropland area and an expansion of forest area. Results show that aHANPP declined from 67% of potential aNPP in 1955 to 61% in 2003. Biomass harvest strongly increased from 68 million tons dry matter biomass per year (Mt/yr) to 106 Mt/yr, with nearly all of this increase occurring on cropland. Productivity losses due to human-induced land conversions dropped significantly from 112 Mt/yr to 63 Mt/yr, mainly as a result of the surge in cropland productivity and the increase in forest area. Despite its decrease during the last decades, aHANPP in Spain is still at a remarkably high level in comparison with the global average or other industrialized countries. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the United Kingdom's society's long-term intervention into the energy flows of domestic terrestrial ecosystems through the human appropriation of aboveground net primary production (aHANPP) covering the period 1800–2000. The depicted aHANPP trajectory and the historical development of its components are discussed in view of a continuously increasing population and the transition process from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime. During the 19th century, aHANPP shows a steady decline from its level of 71% in 1800. While even higher levels were reached during the mid 20th century, the trend during the last forty years of the period under investigation again shows a reduction of aHANPP, which lies at 68% in the year 2000. The high values of aHANPP in the United Kingdom are primarily attributable to the limited amount of forest in comparison to large agricultural areas. At the beginning of the studied period, the relative stabilisation or even decrease in aHANPP in comparison to population development was made possible through the area expansion of and productivity increases on cropland and permanent pastures. Later this was made possible through the outsourcing of biomass harvest, by satisfying local nutritional demands by means of overseas imports, and as from the mid 20th century through huge amounts of fossil fuel based inputs into agriculture (e.g. increased amounts of fertilizers and motorized traction) which allowed increases in biomass harvest to be decoupled from HANPP. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper attempts to quantitatively measure the change in the productivity of Danish organic farming in recent years. Based on a translog production frontier framework the technical and scale efficiency at farm level is analysed by following a time trends as well as a general index model specification. Further this study tries to analyse the significance of subsidies for promoting long term growth in organic production by estimating a bootstrapped bivariate probit model with respect to factors influencing the probability of organic market exit. The results revealed significant differences in the organic farms' technical efficiencies, no significant total factor productivity growth and even a slightly negative rate of technical change in the period investigated. Evidence has been found for a positive relationship between subsidy payments and an increase in farm efficiency, technology improvements and a decreasing probability of organic market exit which was also confirmed for off farm income. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Frequent droughts and groundwater depletion are critical constraints to improving agricultural productivity in the semi-arid tropics. India has been promoting integrated watershed management in drought-prone areas to address these constraints. Watershed communities are being assisted to invest in groundwater re-charging facilities. While communities and the public bear such costs, individual farmers capture irrigation benefits. Groundwater is a free common property resource and land users hold de-facto use rights. This has accelerated private irrigation investments and depletion of aquifers resulting in iniquitous distribution of irrigation water. Power subsidies and negligible pumping costs aggravate the problem. These policy failures and low irrigation costs to farmers are displacing water-efficient crops in favor of water-intensive crops in water-scare areas. The paper reviews the village-level externalities that aggravate groundwater depletion and evaluates potential policy options to enhance local collective action in water management. Using 3SLS, an econometric crop-water productivity model is used to evaluate alternative water policy instruments. The results indicate that different types of water user charges can be introduced with modest consequences on profitability and farm incomes. If properly implemented and managed by the local communities, pro-poor policies could bring considerable sustainability benefits and also ensure enhanced equity in access to the resource. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Liberalization has caused an increase in the global trade of goods and services. In particular, the value and physical volume of agricultural goods traded have largely increased. As the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex, they are rarely included in the national and international agricultural policies. One reason is that there is a lack of concepts and methods for assessing the environmental and social impacts of trade policies. In this paper we develop a method for quantifying and assessing the land use hidden in the export and import of agricultural goods for the case of Switzerland. For our analysis we focus on arable crops. The first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of Switzerland with countries all over the world through the import and export of land use for arable crops. The second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of agricultural land use. We applied the method to the case of wheat cultivation within Switzerland and import to Switzerland. The major problem we were confronted with was the availability of data, which had both to be reliable and available for the countries wheat is imported from. The results show that the calculation of land use is credible. In spite of the problems related with data availability, the assessment results for each indicator are in agreement with the current situation in the respective countries. In addition, the aggregation seems to accurately reflect the countries’ agricultural polices. The developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio-economic impacts of an increase in wheat imports to Switzerland. We argue that this method could be applied for anticipating potential impacts of trade agreements. Still, further research is required for fine-tuning of the utility functions, including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure. For practical applications important aspects like water shortage should enlarge our limited set of indicators. In addition the average impact on a country level was assessed. To refine that, different agricultural systems ranging from intensive to extensive to organic should be considered. Beyond our scope was to analyze impacts due to other life cycle stages than the agricultural production. For informed decision, however, information on the whole life cycle of agricultural products is required. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]