Strategies of disadvantaged mountain dairy farmers as indicators of agricultural structural change: A case study of Murau, Austria

Pinter, Monika; Kirner, Leopold

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2013.12.007

Cited by 28 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Agent-based models offer the opportunity to include non-economic objectives and attitudes into land-use change models [36,37]. This is of specific importance when addressing farmers' behavior in mountain regions [30,32,33]. The analysis of farmers' decision-making in our case study region in the Valais, Switzerland confirms earlier findings that farmers have multiple values and objectives which translate into different farming strategies whereby profit maximization is only one [62,[65][66][67].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

“…More recently, agent-based models (ABM) in land-use change [17][18][19][20] have been introduced as an opportunity to assess future impacts of land-use change in an integrative framework [21,22]. ABM allow interpretation of agent-specific behavior covering individual preferences or motivations beyond income maximization [23][24][25][26][27] which play an important role in mountain farming [28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

Brändle

Langendijk

Peter³

et al. 2015

Land

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Land abandonment and the subsequent re-forestation are important drivers behind the loss of ecosystem services in mountain regions. Agent-based models can help to identify global change impacts on farmland abandonment and can test policy and management options to counteract this development. Realigning the representation of human decision making with time scales of ecological processes such as reforestation presents a major challenge in this context. Models either focus on the agent-specific behavior anchored in the current generation of farmers at the expense of representing longer scale environmental processes or they emphasize the simulation of long-term economic and forest developments OPEN ACCESSLand 2015, 4 476 where representation of human behavior is simplified in time and space. In this context, we compare the representation of individual and aggregated decision-making in the same model structure and by doing so address some implications of choosing short or long term time horizons in land-use modeling. Based on survey data, we integrate dynamic agents into a comparative static economic sector supply model in a Swiss mountain region. The results from an extensive sensitivity analysis show that this agent-based land-use change model can reproduce observed data correctly and that both model versions are sensitive to the same model parameters. In particular, in both models the specification of opportunity costs determines the extent of production activities and land-use changes by restricting the output space. Our results point out that the agent-based model can capture short and medium term developments in land abandonment better than the aggregated version without losing its sensitivity to important socio-economic drivers. For comparative static approaches, extensive sensitivity analysis with respect to opportunity costs, i.e., the measure of benefits forgone due to alternative uses of labor is essential for the assessment of the impact of climate change on land abandonment and re-forestation in mountain regions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 78%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

Brändle

Langendijk

Peter³

et al. 2015

Land

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However it is important to note that national averages could gloss over regionalised disparities. The findings relating farm size to the number of young sole holders suggests that there could be considerable regional differences within countries; mountainous regions, for example, are typically characterised by small-scale farming (Pinter and Kirner, 2014) and may therefore have lower numbers of young people. Regional differences may also include more general traits related to development opportunities for young people in rural areas and potential of the land.…”

Section: The 'Young Farmer Problem' and The Relevance Of Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Deconstructing the ‘young farmer problem in Europe’: Towards a research agenda

Zagata

Sutherland

2015

Journal of Rural Studies

236

163

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“…The marginal landscapes like the ones of TLPD D and E have been subject to several research studies in recent years (MacDonald et al 2000;Bieling et al 2013), because these agricultural areas are in danger of either abandonment (Pinter & Kirner 2014) or intensification and homogenisation (Jongman 2002;Reger et al 2009b), a development which is also reported for other marginal landscapes in Germany (Bruns et al 2000;Bieling et al 2013). In this study it is remarkable that distinct conversion processes on the arable land in favour of maize took place and that the livestock density is the highest.…”

Section: Discussion Of Types Of Agricultural Land Use Patterns and Dymentioning

confidence: 59%

“…Hence, classification systems are a spatial and temporal reference system and can be used as a monitoring, modelling and planning tool (Schröder et al 2007;Pesch et al 2011). Analysing and classifying land use has been a prominent research topic in landscape ecology, but studies describing the regional pattern of agricultural land use, and how this pattern differs within sub-regions, are rare (Mendoza et al 2011;Pinter & Kirner 2014), but see Rounsevell et al (2003), Gellrich & Zimmermann (2007). Largescale drivers of land-use change, like policies and market conditions, are spread at a national or even continental scale.…”

Section: Titelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing Data of the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) to Detect Patterns of Agricultural Land-Use Change at Municipality Level

Lüker-Jans

Simmering²,

Otte

2016

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European landscapes have featured considerable changes towards intensification and marginalisation. These major trends are expected to continue in the future. Besides, the cultivation of bioenergy crops has become an important factor in agricultural land use. A thorough understanding of land-use processes for management purposes is needed. In this study, the spatial and temporal pattern of agricultural land use and land-use change was classified at the scale of municipalities from 2005 to 2010. The study region was the German federal state Hesse. By using data of the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) of the European Union and with the help of k-means cluster analysis, five types of agricultural land-use patterns and dynamics (TLPDs) were detected. These TLPDs represent different sub-regions. Sub-regions with favourable physical conditions for cultivation are dominated by arable land. A progressive land-use change occurred by conversion of grassland to arable land. In sub-regions, where physical conditions are rather unfavourable, especially in mountainous areas, grassland is the predominant land use. But on the remaining arable land, there is a slight change in favour of maize. The knowledge of sub-regions with spatially and temporally different agricultural land use could be utilised to develop land management instruments like site-specific agri-environmental schemes.

show abstract

Strategies of disadvantaged mountain dairy farmers as indicators of agricultural structural change: A case study of Murau, Austria

Cited by 28 publications

References 35 publications

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

Sensitivity Analysis of a Land-Use Change Model with and without Agents to Assess Land Abandonment and Long-Term Re-Forestation in a Swiss Mountain Region

Deconstructing the ‘young farmer problem in Europe’: Towards a research agenda

Analysing Data of the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS) to Detect Patterns of Agricultural Land-Use Change at Municipality Level

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