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| Volume 109(2) 2009, pages: 131-145. | | Robert Huber & Bernard Lehmann: | WTO agreement on agriculture: Potential consequences for agricultural production and landuse patterns in the Swiss lowlands | | A strong link exists between agricultural production and landscape.
Globalisation (more open agricultural markets) will change agricultural
production and thus landscape will change as well. In this
paper, we address the following questions: (a) what economic effects
can be expected with respect to agricultural production structures
in a high cost production region such as the Swiss lowlands given
a substantial development in the WTO; and (b) how does this structural
change influence land-use patterns? We discuss the expected
economic effects from a theo-retical point of view and implement
these findings in a spatially explicit normative programming model
for a case study region in the Swiss lowlands. The results show a
wide range of possible economically efficient outcomes depending
on production costs and farmers’ preferences. Our results imply
that, if production costs were to sink sufficiently, income maximizing
farmers would focus on grassland based milk production. This
would only lead to a modest change in the existing land-use patterns
since our case study region is currently dominated by dairy farms. If
production costs remain high, agricultural production would shift to
more extensive production activities in order to maximize the sectoral
income. In this case, the local landscape would change noticeably. | | >> download as pdf |
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