RESUMEN
Agriculture in Alpine regions plays an important role for multiple ecosystem services (ES) supplied from permanent grassland (PG). This paper investigates the feasibility of sward renewal, overseeding, and rising plate meters on PG for the Swiss Alpine region and analyses their expected effects on ES supply. Sward renewal and overseeding are management options implemented in response to a decline of grassland yields and nutritive value or sward damage. Rising plate meters focus on increased grass utilisation for improving profitability of grassland farms in a sustainable manner. The aim was to improve the understanding which of these three PG management practices could be promoted to deliver a wide range of agricultural and non-agricultural ESs in the Swiss Alpine region. Through interviews with 75 farmers (including organic and intensive/extensive non-organic farmers) and a Delphi-methodology on a panel of experts (N = 10 experts with different expertise), we found that sward renewal is perceived to have negative effects on biodiversity, carbon storage, flood control, prevention of soil erosion, and prevention of loss of organic matter in Alpine regions. Therefore, sward renewal should not be promoted, although about half of the farmers interviewed had already carried out the practice on plots following severe sward damage in Alpine regions. Overseeding is perceived to have positive effects on biodiversity, prevention of soil erosion, and grass production. Thus, the high level of overseeding that is currently practiced in the Swiss Alpine region is probably sustainable. Rising plate meters do not play a significant role in PG management in the Alpine region because calibration in PG with diverse grassland botanical composition in the Alpine region is too difficult.
RESUMEN
Agroforestry is hypothesised to increase ecological and economic functions of farms. Yet it is unclear if and how much agroforestry should be embedded in diversified farming systems to satisfy farmers' needs while potentially enhancing environmental services. To address this research gap we use a mathematical programming model to investigate the role of different agroforestry systems in hypothetical farm portfolios that reduce trade-offs between farmers' goals. Our approach is innovative because it simultaneously considers multiple objectives and the effect of land-use diversification within a farm, is based on knowledge and perceptions of local farmers, and accounts for heterogeneity in farmer judgement. We test the model in a forest frontier region in Eastern Panama, using data from farmer interviews. Farmers evaluated conventional land uses and two agroforestry systems (silvopasture and alley cropping) against 10 pre-defined socio-economic and ecological objectives. First we determined the optimal farm land-use composition that reduces trade-offs between the 10 objectives. The model selects the mix of land uses that secures the best worst-case performance across all objectives, when considering uncertainty in the ability of each land use to achieve each objective (which we quantify by the variability in farmer opinion). Agroforestry dominates the optimised farm portfolio, which comprises 60% silvopasture, 39% forest and 1% plantation. This land-use portfolio, however, deviates strongly from the current land use of farmers, which is 59% pasture, 26% crops, 14% forest and 1% plantation. In a second step we explore the implicit objectives driving farmers' current land-use decisions. We find that immediate-term needs related to food security and liquidity best explain farmers' current land-use portfolio; optimising for these objectives produces a land-use portfolio comprising 60% pasture and 40% crops, which is similar to the current land use. This suggests that increasing agroforestry adoption in the study area will require systems that provide early and frequent returns and allow for ongoing crop production, to better satisfy farmers' cash flow and household consumption needs.