Exploring social preferences for ecosystem services of multifunctional agriculture across policy scenarios

Tourists and Local Stakeholders’ Perception of Ecosystem Services Provided by Summer Farms in the Eastern Italian Alps

“…In particular, the ESs provided by Alpine pastures, especially cultural ESs, might generate a higher market value of the products, as they are positively assessed by tourists. Interestingly, a study on the socio-economic valuation of ESs associated to extensive livestock systems in the province of Trento [30] found that a sample of residents locally and in bordering provinces declared a willingness to pay of 79.3€ for the preservation of water quality (regulating ES), 40.3€ for the conservation of biodiversity of grasslands (supporting ES), 35.5€ for the conservation of traditional agro-pastoral landscape (cultural ES), and 4.6€ for the provision of a larger number of high quality cheese types (provisioning ES). Therefore, the public valued the food chain more for the attributes of external quality of the products (the regulating, cultural and supporting ESs associated with the farming systems) than for the intrinsic quality of the cheese.…”

“…Furthermore, the economic valuation of the ESs, although subject to debate and criticism [56], is of growing interest to analyze the individuals' perception of cultural ESs [28]. The choice experiment or contingent valuation are for example common methods [2,30,31,57]. However, it is still difficult to translate the cultural ESs into monetary values and further research is needed.…”

“…In particular, remunerating the non-marketable ESs provided by extensive livestock systems is necessary for their economic sustainability, and hence for ensuring the future provision of the desired ESs. Since the benefits of these ESs are public, their remuneration should come first from the implementation of payments for ESs in policy measures [2,30,31]. For example, the European agricultural fund for rural development (EAFRD) and the rural development program (RDP), as implemented by the Autonomous Province of Trento, provide payments for the conservation and improvement of meadows and pastures.…”

“…A common requisite for the success of public and market actions promoting the remuneration of ESs is that the society is willing to pay for the targeted ESs [26,27]. In this respect, studies conducted in the province of Trento as well as in other European mountain areas [30,31] showed that the willingness of consumers to pay for various regulating and supporting ESs was high, although the perception of the specific ESs differed regionally. In the context of the province of Trento, the consumers' total willingness to pay for a set of four ESs was close to 160€.…”

A multi-kingdom metabarcoding study on cattle grazing Alpine pastures discloses intra-seasonal shifts in plant selection and faecal microbiota

“…This work addresses such gap by using a DNA-barcoding approach to examine the intra-seasonal qualitative and quantitative changes in the diet botanical composition and in the gut fungal and microbial taxa of lactating cows of two different breeds grazing an Alpine semi-natural grassland. These types of grasslands are managed by extensive livestock systems throughout the European mountain areas 55 – 57 , where they play a fundamental role for the sustainability of livestock farming and for the conservation of mountain landscape and the associated ecosystem services 58 – 60 . Additionally, to our knowledge there are no published results on the simultaneous co-variation of plant, fungi and microbes in grazing ruminants.…”