Recent decades have witnessed substantial losses in biodiversity in Europe, principally driven by the ecological changes associated with intensification of agricultural production. These changes ...especially affected the biodiversity in the marginal areas, such as the uplands in UK, since the habitat change was greater than in lowland zones. Livestock farming is the main land use in these areas, and economic viability of these farmers substantially relies on income coming from agricultural subsidies and different agri-environmental payments. The production decisions are influenced by these incentives and those have a subsequent effect on biodiversity. In order to address the problem of economic viability of farmers together with its impact on biodiversity conservation, we developed ecological-economic models for four typical farm types in the Peak District National Park in UK. We analyse the effect of policies on upland avian densities, focusing on decoupling and agri-environment schemes. The results show that the impact of these policies individually, which sometimes opposite, differs from their aggregated effect. It also shows that the effect differs across farm types. This means that from a biodiversity point of view whatever future policy options are chosen will result in winners and losers.
Hill farming in UK is experiencing very difficult economic circumstances and many farmers rely on subsidies provided by the government for a large fraction of their income. The Peak District National ...Park is used as a case study to examine how farmers might respond to current policy changes � in particular, the move from area- and headage-based payments to the Single Farm Payment, and how optimal business plans should respond to these changes. The objective of this paper is thus to develop production models that predict how farmers will respond to changing policy framework conditions. For this purpose socio-economic surveys were carried out on 44 sample farms, in order to investigate how the land is managed on hill farms including ongoing policies and future farm management planning. Based on these surveys a series of representative farm linear programming models was developed, which represent typical farm types in the uplands in the Peak District. In this study the focus is on typical sheep and beef farm type, the most common in this region. This model is used to calculate the effect of different policies, carried out under CAP reform, on incomes, land use and the intensity of production. We also consider the impacts of a complete removal of subsidy.
Hill farming in UK is experiencing very difficult economic circumstances and many farmers rely on subsidies provided by the government for a large fraction of their income. The Peak District National ...Park is used as a case study to examine how farmers might respond to current policy changes in particular, the move from area- and headage-based payments to the Single Farm Payment, and how optimal business plans should respond to these changes. The objective of this paper is thus to develop production models that predict how farmers will respond to changing policy framework conditions. For this purpose socio-economic surveys were carried out on 44 sample farms, in order to investigate how the land is managed on hill farms including ongoing policies and future farm management planning. Based on these surveys a series of representative farm linear programming models was developed, which represent typical farm types in the uplands in the Peak District. In this study the focus is on typical sheep and beef farm type, the most common in this region. This model is used to calculate the effect of different policies, carried out under CAP reform, on incomes, land use and the intensity of production. We also consider the impacts of a complete removal of subsidy.
In the Total Economic Value (TEV) framework, ecosystems may generate output values (the values generated in the current state of the ecosystem, for example food production, climate regulation and ...recreational value) as well as insurance values. The latter, closely related to 'option value', is the value of ensuring that there is no regime shift in the ecosystem with irreversible negative consequences for human well-being. Even if an ecosystem or some component of it currently generates no output value, its option value may still be significant.
