Indicator-based frameworks for assessing farms' environmental performance have become a resource for environmental knowledge regarding the impacts of agricultural practices. The present study explores whether a novel indicator-based direct payment system, which focuses on the farms'...

Worldwide, feed-food competition for arable land is of rising concern. Swiss agricultural policy wants to promote grass-based cattle feeding through a voluntary direct payment program that is currently being revised. The current version of the program requires a minimum share of 75-85 per cent...

The Swiss agent-based model (SWISSland) claims to depict as realistically as possible the 50 000 family farms comprising the whole of Swiss agriculture in all their heterogeneity as regards farm and cost structures as well as farm decision-making behaviour and interactions, with the aim of...

The development of multi-agent models for agriculture has allowed the inclusion of farm decision-making behaviour and interactions in the simulation of smaller agricultural regions. Important methodological impact for this has come in particular from scientists from Germany. Currently under...

Mit der Entwicklung von Multiagentenmodellen für die Landwirtschaft konnten betriebliche Entscheidungsverhalten und Interaktionen in die Simulation von kleineren Agrarregionen einbezogen werden. Wichtige methodische Impulse dazu kamen insbesondere von Wissen-schaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftlern...

Interviews with Swiss farmers lead to the hypotheses that production decisions, also in crop growing, are not made annually, but similarly to investment decisions in the long run. This hypothesis is backed by non-parametric time-series analysis for Switzerland and Germany. This creates a...

Replaced with revised version of paper 12/05/07.