Abstract

There is a major risk that many of the remaining semi-natural pastures in Swedish forest dominated regions will lose their grazing in the near future with lost biodiversity as a result. The reason is high costs of grazing small pastures with cattle from generally small herds. The approaching decoupling of the present EU income support per head of cattle will increase the risk. Calculations based on economies of scale in beef production and opportunity cost of forest and arable land suggest that re-creating extensive pasture-forest mosaics consisting of existing semi-natural pastures and adjacent arable fields and forests can secure economically sustainable grazing. The risk of local extinction of grassland species due to habitat isolation is also lower in large mosaics than in small, scattered pastures

Keywords

Biodiversity; economies of scale; fragmented pastures; habitat isolation; income support; livestock; semi-natural pastures

Published in

Journal for Nature Conservation
2004, Volume: 12, number: 4, pages: 213-218

SLU Authors

• Kumm, Karl-Ivar

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics and Business
Social Sciences


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2004.07.001

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/5322