To promote biodiversity, a diverse landscape is necessary. Structural change in agriculture and increasing cost pressure have led to the trend of fewer farms and larger farming units with less diversity. Reversing this trend is a societal task that requires a willingness to make sacrifices. For...

The European Union's Council Regulation (EC) No 1698/2005 on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development has introduced promising changes in rewarding farmers by the implementation of conservation auctions and granting farmers' transaction costs. The...

Net soil carbon sequestration on agricultural lands could offset 4% of annual global human-induced GHG emissions over the rest of the century and make an important contribution to meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement. To harness this potential of the agricultural sector to positively...

Achievement of Sustainable Development Goals critically depends on wellfunctioning food systems which can provide sufficient and healthy food for all in an environmentally sustainable, economically viable and socially equitable manner. However, current food systems are failing on all of these...

Based on economic methodology we model an ecosystem with two species in predator-prey relationship: mice feed on grain and grain feeds on a resource. With optimizing behaviour of individual organisms a short-run ecosystem equilibrium is defined and characterized that depends on the farmer's use...

Agriculture uses more land and water than any other human activity, and our consumption demands continue to grow even as our resource base shrinks. A highly industrialized U.S. food system produces lots of food at seemingly low per unit cost. But our current system is taking a heavy toll on...

To promote biodiversity, a diverse landscape is necessary. Structural change in agriculture and increasing cost pressure have led to the trend of fewer farms and larger farming units with less diversity. Reversing this trend is a societal task that requires a willingness to make sacrifices. For...

The issue of ecosystem services is a relatively new concept in economic theory. This is the concept considered problematic, due to the difficulty of defining the benefits provided to people by ecosystems and their measurement and valuation. Some of these services are strongly associated with...

Die in der Nitratrichtlinie vorgegebenen Ziele für die Qualität des Grundwassers konnten bislang weder in Deutschland insgesamt noch in Rheinland-Pfalz (RP) flächendeckend erreicht werden (BMU und BMEL, 2020). In RP befanden sich 2019/2020 35 der insgesamt 117 Grundwasserkörper in schlechtem...

This study addresses the achievements of cooperative agreements in sustainable agriculture policy. After an economic analysis of multi-actor choice situations, it focuses the attention on the self-organizing potential of regional market parties in order to comply with environmental policy...