| Abstract: | Agricultural landscape use serves many purposes and many different people. For this reason, many public and private institutions are involved in the problem of optimal landscape use. In farms and rural family households basic decisions are taken on the intensity of agricultural landscape use. The decision-makers of these private institutions try to adapt optimally to the socio-economic framework. Public institutions play a key role in creating the socio-economic framework by policy-making. Thus, their members determine at least the use of agricultural landscapes and whether the use is ecologically and economically efficient and sustainable or not. To guide landscape use in an optimal direction, however, is a hard task for public decision-makers because nobody knows exactly what an ecologically and economically efficient and sustainable use of agricultural landscapes is. This problem results from unknown values, unknown interrelations between technology and nature, and unknown evolutionary processes in nature and in societies. Thus, there is a broad area for speculation about optimal landscape use. Such speculation, however, can be minimized by analysing options for action systematically. This is demonstrated in the case of an agricultural landscape in Southern Germany. In this case study, eight parts of a naturally homogeneous region are analysed by using multi-criteria valuation, linear programming and trade-off analyses. By combining these methods, the ecological and economical status quo of the uses of an agricultural landscape and possibilities for its improvement are evaluated to find out how the landscape can be used ecologically and economically in the most efficient way. Trade-offs representing a production frontier between the production of marketable and nonmarketable landscape goods are identified. With these findings, efficient agricultural policy options are revealed for the simultaneous achievement of ecological and economic efficiency and sustainability. |
