Papers by Bernard Lehmann
The improvement of the sustainable performance of the agricultural sector is a priority of the Sw... more The improvement of the sustainable performance of the agricultural sector is a priority of the Swiss agricultural policy. The sustainability of Swiss dairy farms located in the mountainous area might be critical as many of them show a weak performance in the use of their economic and/or social resources, and sometimes also of their environmental resources. An improvement of the sustainability of these farms prerequisites to better know on a large scale their sustainable performance and its determinants. For a representative sample of 480 dairy farms, we perform an assessment of their sustainable efficiency with the "sustainable value", an approach to assess corporate sustainability based on the capital and opportunity cost theories. Using a linear regression, we analyze the determinants of the sustainable efficiency. The results show a tight positive relationship between sustainable performance and pure economic performance. The intensity of the use of intermediate consump...
This paper analyzes the evolution of Swiss farm productivity during the implementation of environ... more This paper analyzes the evolution of Swiss farm productivity during the implementation of environmental policy reforms. We employ a production model formulation with technology parameters defined as the functions of subsidies, as well as individual farm characteristics. Our estimates for two groups of farms – milk-producing and crop farms – show that introducing environmental regulations induced serious changes in the production technology and productivity of inputs, especially of land, labor and fertilizer. The overall effect of the subsidies on the production output has been found negative. At the same time, we find that farms do not use their resources optimally, which indicates some deficiencies in structural adjustments, primarily in the land and labor markets.
The contribution outlines the goals, the organisational structures and the key issues of the NRP ... more The contribution outlines the goals, the organisational structures and the key issues of the NRP 48 (National Research Programme). In addition, it gives an overview of the subjects covered by the 35 on-going research projects. On this basis, the stakeholders dealing with subjects relating to Landscapes and Habitats are invited to take into account the knowledge gained from the NRP 48 within their field of activity. Furthermore, the author invites the reader to a dialogue with the research teams and the programme leaders.
The research objective is to shed light on the structural adjustment process of farming enterpris... more The research objective is to shed light on the structural adjustment process of farming enterprises in Switzerland. To this end, an analytical tool is developed which allows us to identify the most important influencing factors and to estimate in advance their effects on the structural adjustment process. The resulting structures will be compared with the relevant goals of the (agricultural) policy in order to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of the adjustment process. Using scenario techniques combined with an agent-based simulation, the influencing factors are varied to investigate alternative options like cooperation and collaboration strategies for improving the effectiveness with respect to the social, ecological and economic goals.
Research Papers in Economics, 2006
Farmers' intentions about conversion to particularly animal-friendly stabling system (PAFS) a... more Farmers' intentions about conversion to particularly animal-friendly stabling system (PAFS) are analyzed with a structural equation model. The Theory of Planned Behavior (ToPB, Ajzen 1985) is used as the theoretical basis of this study. Though ToPB is a well-defined theory, it is static rather than procedural and cannot model the individual decision-making as a process. Therefore, we first examine the general applicability of ToPB in an agricultural context and explain the variance in intentions of farmers to convert to PAFS. Second, we extend the ToPB to make it more procedural. For this purpose, research findings from the Diffusion Theory are included as part of the behavioral model. The empirical results indicate that the model has a good fit to the data. The effects of the additional variables "Goal" and "Communication" are highly significant. This illustrates the importance of forming personal goals in the behavior domain and that people act in a goal-di...
Farmers' decisions about conversion to organic farming are analyzed with a structural equatio... more Farmers' decisions about conversion to organic farming are analyzed with a structural equation model. The Theory of Planned Behavior (ToPB), one of the prominent theories in the social psychology, is used as the theoretical basis of this study. Though ToPB is a well-defined theory, it is static rather than procedural and cannot model the individual decision-making as a process. Therefore, we first examine the general applicability of ToPB in an agricultural context and explain the variance in intentions of farmers to convert to organic farming. Second, we extend the ToPB to make it more procedural. For this purpose, research findings from the Diffusion Theory are included as part of the behavioral model. The empirical results indicate that, overall, the model has an acceptable fit to the data. The effects of the additional variables "Goal" and "Communication" are highly significant. This illustrates the importance of forming personal goals in the behavior dom...
Agricultural Economics (Zemědělská ekonomika), 2012
This paper analyses the effects of Swiss agricultural policy reforms and the effects of farm inco... more This paper analyses the effects of Swiss agricultural policy reforms and the effects of farm income, off-farm income and direct payments on the distribution of the farm household income. To this end, the farm-level income records from the FADN data for the period 1990–2009 are used to calculate Gini coefficients and Gini elasticities. Bootstrap sampling procedures are applied to test for significant differences of the estimated parameters over time. The Gini coefficients estimated in our analysis show that the household income inequality in Swiss agriculture only slightly increased from 0.21 to 0.24, but the farm income inequality strongly increased from 0.27 to 0.38 in the considered period. We find furthermore that increasing off-farm incomes and direct payments would decrease the household income inequality. Especially direct payments that support farmers producing under adverse production conditions in the hill and mountain regions have found to be well targeted and thus contrib...
Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 2007
Summary We investigate environmental aspects of agriculture from a welfare economic perspective a... more Summary We investigate environmental aspects of agriculture from a welfare economic perspective and show that efficiency prices of agricultural and forest land include important amenity and non-use values that exhibit the character of undepletable externalities. To achieve a social optimum these must be internalised, while taking equity concerns into account. We propose compensation of farmers and forest managers according to the marginal external benefit of their land use and a combination of charges and subsidies to improve rural water quality. This is consistent with efficiency requirements and would not cause additional market distortions. Moreover, it would leave the property rights on the land with the farmers and assign the right on clean air and water to the consumers.
Recherche Agronomique Suisse, 2010
Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 2010
Entrepreneurship as local entrepreneurial potential for regional development in rural areas. Evid... more Entrepreneurship as local entrepreneurial potential for regional development in rural areas. Evidence from a Delphi-survey in Switzerland. The promotion of entrepreneurship is part of many regional policies. By implementing such policies, however, stakeholders often neither share a common interpretation of the term entrepreneurship nor do they have indicators for the measurement of entrepreneurship at hand. This paper offers both a definition and a set of indicators to measure entrepreneurship in peripheral regions. The results are based on a Delphi-survey of experts for regional development in Switzerland.
The importance of goods and services provided by mountainous areas increases rapidly as the numbe... more The importance of goods and services provided by mountainous areas increases rapidly as the number of people depending on them grows. Yet, these ecosystems are fragile and vulnerable to rapid climate and socio-economic driven land-use changes. In order to identify adaptation strategies for sustainable development of mountainous landscapes, both supply and demand for ecosystem ser-vices under future scenarios needs to be assessed. Such task needs highly inter- and transdisciplinary research approaches. In this contribution, we present the inter- and transdisciplinary research project MOUNTLAND in which ecosystem functioning and management in mountain regions under climate and socio-economic changes are analyzed. We focus on introducing the core of the project - an eco-nomic land-use model linked to dynamic land-cover change models, which allows showing how land-users make ecosystem services’ trade-offs under different normative scenarios. Opportunity costs for the provision of ecosystem services in a given landscape are presented in a spatially explicit manner. We discuss advantages and limitations of such an approach with respect to its value for suggesting adaptive landscape management practices.
Globalisation and Agricultural Landscapes
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography, 2009
ABSTRACT A strong link exists between agricultural production and landscape. Globalisation (more ... more ABSTRACT A strong link exists between agricultural production and landscape. Globalisation (more open agricultural markets) will change agri- cultural 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 struc- tural 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 maximiz- ing 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.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2009
has obtained his engineering degree in agronomics at the Technische Universität München (TUM), Ge... more has obtained his engineering degree in agronomics at the Technische Universität München (TUM), Germany. Recently, he finished his PhD thesis ("Economic analyses of strategies to mitigate greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions in Swiss agriculture") at the Agrifood & Agri-environmental Economics Group (AFEE) at IED. As a postdoctoral researcher he focuses on economic analysis of greenhouse gas fluxes relevant for climate in the Swiss agriculture. Robert Huber holds a master degree in Agricultural Economics from ETH. Currently, he is preparing his PhD thesis at the Agri-food & Agri-environmental Economics Group (AFEE) at IED, which is expected to be finished in January 2010. His research focuses on multifunctionality of agriculture, agricultural landscape and economic-ecological modeling. Dr. Simon Peter attained his master degree in Agricultural Economics at the ETH. He has finished his PhD thesis entitled: "Modeling of agro-ecological issues under consideration of structural change in Swiss agriculture" at the Agri-food & Agri-environmental Economics Group (AFEE) at IED, where he is presently a postdoctoral researcher. His area of responsibility is the quantitative modeling part in several federal research projects, e.g. Greenhouse-Gas and Nitrogen Abatement Strategies in Swiss Agriculture and analyzing the competition for farmland between crop-based food and energy production.
Land use systems in …, 2004
... Authors Lehmann, B.; Hediger, W. Editors Lúscher, A.;Jeangros, B.;Kessler, W.;Huguenin, O.;Lo... more ... Authors Lehmann, B.; Hediger, W. Editors Lúscher, A.;Jeangros, B.;Kessler, W.;Huguenin, O.;Lobsiger, M.;Millar, N.;Suter, D. Book chapter; Conference paper Land use systems in grassland dominated regions. ... To learn more about our products please visit our website. ...
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Papers by Bernard Lehmann