Assessing farm sustainability with value oriented methods

Agricultural policy makers aim to combine strong economic performance with a sustainable use of natural resources. An important step is to move from trying to define sustainability towards developing concrete tools for measuring and promoting achievements in sustainability. Hence, sustainability assessment is inevitably based on strong simplifications both of the theoretical paradigm and of the characteristics of systems of concern. The most known approaches to assess sustainability performance are burden orientated: they assess the costs or potential harm of resource use. These burden-oriented approaches focus on the level of environmental impacts caused by an economic activity compared to another set of environmental impacts, while value-oriented impact assessment analyses how much value has been created with this set of environmental impacts as compared with the use of these resources by other companies. In this paper, an outline of the possibilities and limitations of value-oriented methods to assess farm sustainability will be discussed.sustainability assessment, agriculture, value oriented, Farm Management,

Input-output Concepts, Profits and Productivity Growth: An Application Using Flemish Farm Level Data

Farm Management, Productivity Analysis,

An empirical economic model to reveal behaviour characteristics driving the evolution of agriculture in Belgium

Effective design of agricultural policies requires an understanding of the drivers behind the evolution of the agricultural sector. This project builds an evolutionary economic model of the Belgian agricultural sector, as a testing ground for new policies. This agent-based model simulates the dairy, cow and pig sector. The model is calibrated to historical data of production and farm diversity during the period 2003 - 2013. Profit maximising agents cannot replicate the historical trends. When assuming heterogeneous behaviours, the actual evolution can be reproduced much more closely. The calibration reveals key behaviour variables. The evolution in the agricultural sector can only be explained when accounting for a resistance to change at farm level or at market level. However, this approach cannot determine the exact location of this resistance. The resistance to change can result from personal convictions of the farmer or from market rigidities and learning effects

Sustainability indicators of Iran's developmental plans : application of the sustainability compass theory

The main purpose of this study was to analyze Iran's developmental plans in order to examine and compare their direction and conformity with the sustainable development theory via the compass of sustainability. The approach involves a content analysis used in line with qualitative research methodologies. The results indicated that, in the first developmental plans, there was no direct reference to sustainable development. In the second to fifth plans, the main focus was on the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of development; which were common elements seen in the policies of all the plans. An analysis of the fourth plan revealed that expressions related to sustainable development appeared more frequently, indicating a stronger emphasis on sustainable development by decision-makers

Farm household risk balancing : implications for policy from an EU perspective

Purpose - Building on the risk balancing theory and on recent discussions the appropriateness of using farm income maximization as behavioural assumption, this paper extends the risk balancing framework by accounting for business-household interactions. The purpose of this paper is to theoretically introduce the concept of farm household risk balancing, a theoretical framework in which the farm household sets a constraint on the total household-level risk and balances farm-level and off-farm-level risk. Design/methodology/approach - The paper argues that the risk behaviour of farmers is better understood by considering risk at the household level. Using an analytical framework, equations are derived linking the farm activities, off-farm activities, consumption and business and private liquidity. Findings - The framework shows that a farm household that wants to minimize the risk that total household cash flow falls below consumption needs, may exhibit a wide variety of behavioural responses to changes in the policy and economic environment. Social implications - The framework suggests multiple ways for policy makers and individual farmers to support risk management. Originality/value - Risk management is at the core of the agricultural policy and it is of paramount importance to be able to understand behavioural responses to market and policy instruments. This paper contributes to that by suggesting that the focus of current risk analysis and management studies may be too narrowly focused at the farm level

SUSTAINABLE EFFICIENCY OF FIRMS WHEN NEW SUSTAINABILITY TARGETS ARE INTRODUCED

There is a high potential for simultaneously increasing sustainability of the earth system and economic development by removing inefficiencies currently present both at the production input and output side. In this paper a static view on sustainability is employed, by introducing capacity constraints as the boundaries above (or below) which the system cannot maintain its stable state. Currently these capacity constraints are often not respected. In this paper it is shown how the efficiency improvement pathway of an industry and the firms within it can be calculated to come to a sustainable, profit maximizing state, given the existence of these capacity constraints.Efficiency analysis, sustainability, DEA, directional distance vectors, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Vulnerability assessment models to drought : toward a conceptual framework

Drought is regarded as a slow-onset natural disaster that causes inevitable damage to water resources and to farm life. Currently, crisis management is the basis of drought mitigation plans, however, thus far studies indicate that effective drought management strategies are based on risk management. As a primary tool in mitigating the impact of drought, vulnerability assessment can be used as a benchmark in drought mitigation plans and to enhance farmers' ability to cope with drought. Moreover, literature pertaining to drought has focused extensively on its impact, only awarding limited attention to vulnerability assessment as a tool. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for designing a vulnerability model in order to assess farmers' level of vulnerability before, during and after the onset of drought. Use of this developed drought vulnerability model would aid disaster relief workers by enhancing the adaptive capacity of farmers when facing the impacts of drought. The paper starts with the definition of vulnerability and outlines different frameworks on vulnerability developed thus far. It then identifies various approaches of vulnerability assessment and finally offers the most appropriate model. The paper concludes that the introduced model can guide drought mitigation programs in countries that are impacted the most by drought

MICROWAVE: A GENERIC FRAMEWORK FOR MICRO SIMULATIONBASED EX ANTE POLICY EVALUATION

This paper presents the MicroWave approach that has been developed to improve the process of modeling in the context of micro simulation. It leads to a more efficient model development, better quality of models and their output and improvement in knowledge management. A conceptual framework has been developed and translated into a hierarchical structure of GAMS program code. Besides, several software applications and other tools have been developed for support. These products are presented and some examples illustrate how MicroWave can be applied. MicroWave is especially useful in interdisciplinary research in which different persons are involved in the modeling process and when different models have to be combined.Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

A Cross-European Analysis of the Impact of Electricity Pricing on Battery Uptake in Residential Microgrids with Photovoltaic Units

As decentralized electricity generation is supporting grid development into the prosumer era, this paper investigates the economic viability of adding batteries to residential microgrids powered by photovoltaic units, under various electricity pricing schemes. Batteries bring the benefits of grid-stabilization and congestion relief, and they are also becoming cheaper. The problem identified is that the main grid effectively acts as a lossless storage system, especially under the net-metering scheme, whereas using a battery involves investment costs and energy losses. This mismatch is addressed by analysing residential microgrid projects under seven tariff designs, each in seven countries of the European Union, and compare the economic viability of photovoltaic systems with and without batteries. The findings show that the conditions most favourable to batteries are given by a capacity tariff scheme allowing price arbitrage. Based on these findings, the paper discusses possibilities for further support in order to bring the economic viability of microgrids with batteries on par with that of microgrids without batteries