Suchergebnisse

farm structure in Austria and level of educationchallenges of more volatile markets / more uncertain yieldsmore uncertainty about revenues and costsspecialisation and liquidity problems – not alleviated by EU direct paymentspolitical measures: late, uncertain, no legal title, wrong incentivestax credits – not relevant in Austria for most farmsprice hedging instruments steep learning curve and intransparent marketsmost frequently used: service of buying co-operatives control of accumulation risksdetails of contract are attractive for farmerse.g. monthly benefits for milk producersbenefits at the time of sale for pig, piglet, grain producerscombination with production risk insurance with discountsgovernment support during introduction period / as a new policy instrumentmarketing and sales: wholesale buyers / dairies / producer organisations offer margin insurance as a service

This paper addresses protein crop production in Europe. European food and feed industries highly depend on imported protein crops and derived products and climate change is likely to affect domestic protein crop production and thus the import dependency. The recent reform of EU agricultural policy reform aims at promoting climate friendly agricultural practices and stimulating the production of protein crops. We choose three contrasting climate change scenarios as well as specifications of the recent CAP reform in order to investigate how farmers might adapt to changing land use restrictions and climate conditions. Output response, land allocation and nitrogen use are the main variables of interest. Exemplified for Austrian cropland, we apply an integrated modeling framework consisting of a statistical climate change model, a crop rotation model, the bio-physical process model EPIC, and the economic bottom-up land use optimization model BiomAT. This model maximizes total gross margins by optimizing for land use and crop management practices for different scenarios of climate change and market conditions. Results obtained at a 1 km grid are aggregated to the national level. The model results indicate that changes in policy conditions, cropland use, and flexibility in crop management practices may have stronger effects on total protein crop production than climate change in the next decades. An expansion of current protein crop production leads to an increase in marginal opportunity costs, reduces mineral fertilizer input demand, and mainly replaces maize in the crop rotations.

Climate change will pose considerable challenges to Austrian agriculture which will likely be affected by a higher frequency of extreme weather events and more volatile commodity prices. We want to analyse the spatial, economic and social dimension of this threat by exploring expected consequences for the most important agricultural activity in Austria, cattle and dairy farming. We will evaluate a broad bouquet of adaptation measures from both, the perspective of the single farm as well as from the agricultural policy perspective. By aligning scenarios on projections of climate conditions and socio-economic developments with those developed in the EU MACSUR project (www.macsur.eu), the results will be consistent with state of the art analyses on climate change in Europe. By integrating results from a well established life cycle analysis model that will be specified to the Austrian situation we will broaden the spectrum of existing knowledge substantially. The results will allow policy makers to base their decisions on evidence that is not limited to the Austrian situations but includes spillover effects to foreign countries as well. Farmers willbe able to benefit directly from results of this project because stakeholders from the farm sector are part of the analyses from the beginning. An additional benefit of the project is that it is closely integrated to the activities of the international network of researchers working on climate change and food security in Europe.

Die Rolle der Landwirtschaft geht über die Produktion von Agrargütern hinaus. Das Thema dieser Arbeit ist, die Aussagekraft dieser Feststellung zu erkunden. Es wird nicht der Versuch unternommen, die Aufgaben und Funktionen der Landwirtschaft enzyklopädisch zu erfassen. Im Gegenteil, eine kleine Zahl von pragmatischen Konzepten wird herangezogen, um die Rolle der Landwirtschaft zu beleuchten. Orientierung bieten die Vorschläge der OECD. Sie schlug vor, die Multifunktionalität der Landwirtschaft so zu untersuchen, dass Wirkungen und Produkte unterschieden werden. Zunächst steht die Landwirtschaft im OECD-Raum im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung. Am Beispiel Österreichs werden dort gewonnene Erkenntnisse vertiefend dargestellt. Die Multifunktionalität der Landwirtschaft rührt von den spezifischen Produktionsbeziehungen her. Im Zuge der Produktion kommt es zu beabsichtigten und unbeabsichtigten Nebenprodukten und Wirkungen; positive wie negative externe Effekte sind von besonderer Bedeutung. Diese beeinflussen und verändern die Wirtschaft im ländlichen Raum und darüber hinaus. Anhand von Beispielen wird veranschaulicht, dass zahlreiche Auswirkungen nicht nur identifiziert, sondern auch quantifiziert werden können. Vielfach sind dazu Modelle erforderlich. Mit ihrer Hilfe wird gezeigt, dass das Programm zur ländlichen Entwicklung zwar vornehmlich an die Landwirtschaft im ländlichen Raum gerichtet ist, aber auch andere Wirtschaftsbereiche in nicht-ländlichen Gebieten stark profitieren. Die Ergebnisse der Arbeit können Anhaltspunkte für eine treffsicherere Politik liefern, die zum Ziel hat, die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raums zu unterstützen. ; Agriculture is more than just the production of food and fibre. The topic of this thesis is to find evidence for this statement. There are no efforts made to describe the functions and roles of agriculture in an encyclopaedic manner. Pragmatic concepts as those proposed by OECD are applied to a small set of practical questions. The OECD suggested to identify commodity and non-commodity outputs of agriculture in order to make concepts like the multifunctionality of agriculture operational. The thesis starts with exploring the role of agriculture in the rural economy in OECD countries. In the following chapters Austrian agriculture is taken as an example. A general notion of the thesis is that agriculture is not the only sector with substantial spillovers and external effects. Agriculture is 'multi-functional' in the sense that several outputs are produced intentionally but that unintended spillovers are associated with them as well. Positive and negative external effects are significant and agricultural outputs and spillovers affect the rural economy via direct and indirect channels. The thesis shows that some of the spillovers and effects can not only be identified but also quantified. Models need to be employed to make that possible in some cases. A model analysis shows that farmers in rural regions are the main beneficiaries of the program of rural development in Austria. But due to economic relationships other parts of the economy in non-rural regions benefit from the program too. These results may contribute to a better understanding of the role of agriculture in the rural economy and help to better target policies that aim at improving the quality of life and well-being in rural regions. ; Franz Sinabell ; Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des Verfassers ; Zsfassung in dt. Sprache ; Wien, Univ. für Bodenkultur, Diss., 2009 ; OeBB ; (VLID)1930890

Organic farming practices have environmental benefits compared to conventional ones. Their adoption is the result of a complex interaction of intrinsic attitudes of farmers, their profit expectations and farm policy incentives. We use an agricultural sector model and develop an extended version of the Positive Mathematical Programming (PMP) method to differentiate organic farming from other management practices. Austria is chosen for the case study because 8 percent of its farmland are managed organically, and detailed data on alternative management practices are available. The results suggest that the agricultural policy reforms have made organic farming more attractive to farmers.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was fundamentally reformed in 2003. From 2005 on, farmers will receive decoupled income support payments instead of production premiums if basic standards for environment, food safety, animal health and welfare are met. Farmers will likely adjust production and management practices to the new policy framework. We describe how this reform fits into the EU strategy of making agricultural production more environmentally friendly by concentrating on financial aspects. Using an agricultural sector model for Austria, we show that the reform will further decrease agricultural outputs, reduce farm inputs, lessen nitrogen surpluses and make environmentally friendly management practices more attractive for farmers.

Die Gemeinsame Agrarpolitik ist die größte Ausgabenposition des EU-Haushalts. Durch die Erweiterung der EU um Länder mit hohem Agraranteil mussten in den vergangenen Jahren zusätzliche Herausforderungen bewältigt werden. Die Studie untersucht, welche Optionen zur Finanzierung des Agrarhaushalts auf Ebene der EU prinzipiell zur Verfügung stehen und wie sie von den einzelnen Gruppen von Entscheidungsträgern eingeschätzt werden. Zudem werden die Auswirkungen der einzelnen Finanzierungsvarianten auf die Verteilung der Direktzahlungen auf die Mitgliedsländer und innerhalb der Mitgliedsländer berechnet.

Im Jahr 2007 stiegen die Preise von landwirtschaftlichen Produkten sehr stark. Dadurch erhöhte sich das Einkommen in der Landwirtschaft. Im Jahr 2008 werden die Agrarpreise voraussichtlich unter dem Niveau des Vorjahres liegen. Die Betriebsmittel, vor allem Dieselkraftstoff und Dünger, verteuerten sich jedoch. Für repräsentative Agrarprodukte werden Kalkulationen von Deckungsbeiträgen vorgelegt, in denen die Auswirkungen der Preisänderungen von Inputs und Outputs untersucht werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass vor allem wegen der Produktionskostensteigerung die Ertragssituation in den untersuchten Betriebszweigen 2008 wesentlich ungünstiger sein wird als 2007.