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A variety of agri-environmental instruments can be used to combat water pollution by pesticides in agriculture according to the regulation EC 1257/1999. The chosen policies should be politically feasible and capable to prevent external effects cost-effectively. One possible policy instrument for Germany is the implementation of nation-wide buffer strip programs. This paper aims at evaluating the cost-effectiveness of alternative strip widths. Therefore an indicator is developed that reflects the impact of plant protectant use on aquatic ecosystems. This indicator is used to compute reductions in pesticide impact of different strip widths and the agricultural opportunity costs computed by the agri-environmental policy-information-system RAUMIS.

According to the formulation of a political concept which centres on the principles of sustainable agricultural land use, agri-environmental aspects have gained an accretive importance within model based policy consultation. In this context, the following article illustrates the Regionalised Agricultural and Environmental Information System RAUMIS. It describes the state of development of the actual integration of agri-environmental indicators as well as analytical results and their applicatory suitability. The main intention of using indicators within RAUMIS is to achieve a differentiated illustration of environmental impacts of agricultural land use in the context of actual-state analysis and prospective simulations.