This article deals with the Local Agri-Environmental Schemes (LAES), the French contractual policy instrument within the European Rural Development Regulation (2007-2013), designed to improve water quality within priority watersheds. The paper is structured in three parts. The first one focuses...

Natural and anthropogenic conditions determine the intensity and direction of pedogenesis, as well as the nature and degree of degradation of the soil cover of the Republic of Moldova. Depending on the combination of natural and anthropogenic factors, the forms of land degradation are expand....

"Flowering Meadows" is the name of a new style of agri-environmental contract which has been included into the French Rural Development Plan 2007-2013. This contract is unusual in all respects. Management prescriptions are given up: the farmer is free to tend his meadow as he wants as long as he...

This paper represents an analysis of the way in which the organic farming has evolved in the EU member states, focusing on the crop production. The analysed period is 2000-2011, years for which a full set of data was found. Data regarding the following have been analysed and interpreted:...

Biodiversity has a prominent role in defining and preserving ecosystem well-being; the analysis of biodiversity effects on agricultural production is well documented. The paper offers empirical evidence on the role of intra-species biodiversity in sustaining cereal production within Italian...

On-farm agricultural biodiversity conservation has long been recognized as a fundamental resource to the maintenance of ecologic and economic functions. Among the factors affecting biodiversity, institutional failures at different scales are reported as potential causes of biodiversity loss both...