Browsing by Person "Repar, Nina"

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On the interplay of local versus global environmental and economic performance of Swiss alpine dairy farms
(2017) Repar, Nina; Doluschitz, Reiner
This cumulative dissertation consists of a general introduction (Chapter 1), three scientific papers (Chapters 2, 3 and 4) and a general conclusion (Chapter 5). The first peer-reviewed paper presented in Chapter 2 is of a conceptual nature. Based on a comprehensive and systematic review of the farm-level environmental performance indicators found in scientific literature, it shows that several of these indicators are inconsistently defined and inappropriate for the purpose of farm environmental performance assessment. This is due to the lack of conceptual considerations behind their definition. In the second step, starting from the environmental sustainability concept at macro level, the paper develops conceptual considerations on how to implement this concept at farm level into theoretically sound and consistent indicators of farm environmental performance. Based on the environmental sustainability concept viewed from an ecological perspective and on the associated ecosystem’s carrying capacity (constraint) concept, it distinguishes between the carrying capacity of the global ecosystem and that of the local ecosystem. Relying on this distinction, it proposes to differentiate between the global and local environmental performance of a farm. Whereas farm global environmental performance relates the cradle-to-farm gate (i.e. off- and on-farm) environmental impacts to the biophysical farm output, farm local environmental performance focuses on local on-farm environmental impact generation and relates it to the local on-farm area. The second peer-reviewed paper (Chapter 3) consists in an empirical application of the framework developed in Chapter 2. This application was carried out for a sample of 56 Swiss dairy farms, for which very detailed and comprehensive cradle-to-farm gate life cycle assessments (LCAs) were conducted. Farm global environmental performance was assessed as the farm digestible energy output for humans per unit of cradle-to-farm gate environmental impact. Farm local environmental performance was measured by the on-farm land area per unit of on-farm environmental impact. The paper investigates the relationships within the environmental performance dimension (i.e. between farm global and local environmental performance), and between the environmental and economic performance dimensions. The results showed the complexity of the relationships between farm global and local environmental performance. Trade-offs occurred more frequently than synergies, implying that an improvement in farm global environmental performance regarding one environmental issue will likely lead to a deterioration in farm local environmental performance regarding at least one other issue, and vice versa. These trade-offs highlight the challenging and complex nature of the improvement of the environmental sustainability of farming and provide clear evidence that farm environmental performance cannot and should not be reduced to a single “one size fits all” indicator. Our work furthermore showed the existence of synergies between farm global environmental and economic performance. The third peer-reviewed paper (Chapter 4) relies on the same dataset as used in Chapter 3. It investigates different structural, farm management, socio-demographic, technological and natural-environment-related determinants of the economic and environmental performance of dairying. It aims to identify the factors with the potential to simultaneously improve farm global environmental, local environmental and economic performance. The results revealed the existence of some factors presenting synergies and several factors showing trade-offs in the enhancement of these three dimensions of the sustainable performance of a farm. Organic farming, higher agricultural education level of the farm manager, the production of silage-free milk, and also, however to a weaker extent, full-time farming, larger farm size and a lower intensity of cattle concentrates use were identified as factors that allow global environmental, local environmental and economic performance to be improved simultaneously. More generally, the promotion of farm global environmental performance and farm economic performance was shown to be synergetic whereas the enhancement of farm global and local environmental performance turned out to be mostly antinomic. The core implications and related recommendations derived from the findings of this work are twofold. First, the conceptually correct measurement of farm environmental performance imperatively requires (i) the separate implementation of global and local environmental performance indicators as proposed in the framework and (ii) the consideration of both global and local dimensions to avoid environmental problem shifting from local to global scale and vice versa. This is especially necessary as the empirical application for Swiss alpine dairy farming found several trade-offs between farm global and local environmental performance. This empirical finding has far-reaching implications, especially if it is to be confirmed for other types of farms and other countries. The second core finding of this dissertation relates to the possibilities for improving the environmental and economic sustainability of Swiss alpine dairy farming. This work showed that there are some factors, namely organic farming, higher agricultural education level of the farm manager, the production of silage-free milk, and also, however to a weaker extent, lower intensity of concentrates use, larger farm size and full-time farming, which allow farm global environmental, local environmental and economic performance to be improved simultaneously.