In the coming years, significant changes are to be expected in agriculture in mountain regions due to the changing general environment. It can be assumed that product prices will sink while production costs remain unchanged at their present high level. Therefore, a more incisive structural...

Switzerland aims to liberalise the milk market by 2011. This will result in distinctive changes in the basic conditions for agriculture. The impacts of the liberalisation are investigated with a composite model obtained by combining an optimization model for the agricultural sector and a dynamic...

This article with biological-technological developments in crop production and their impacts on arable farming within the next 20 years. Possible future technological developments are evaluated with the help of a Delphi survey. The impacts of promising new technologies are estimated by means of...

This paper develops a thorough yet easily implementable approach to measuring agriculture’s contribution to rural viability. The approach is based on input-output modelling. It adopts a number of concepts from input-output modelling such as determining the explicit geographical origin of input...

Die Alpwirtschaft erfüllt im Rahmen einer multifunktionalen Landwirtschaft vielfältige Funktionen. Sie besitzt eine enorme ökonomische Bedeutung für die Schweizer Berglandwirtschaft, trägt sie doch mit über 30 % zum Einkommen in dieser Region bei. Prognosen mit dem Sektormodell SILAS...

The short-run effects of fungicide application on economic risk and the effects of risk on fungicide use in Swiss wheat production are empirically explored. A quadratic production function model is developed. With the help of the moment-based approach, marginal contributions of fungicides...

Modern biotechnology will generate crops with higher yields and enhanced resistance to pests and diseases. In the case of perennial crops, the age composition of the present stand, the farmers' willingness to invest, and the yield profiles of old and new trees determine the speed of adoption of...