Economic and environmental analysis of sustainable farming practices - a Bavarian case study

For this purpose the model system MODAM was used. MODAM simulates agricultural land use at farm level, calculates the economic returns and environmental impacts and runs farm optimizations with a linear programming tool. The integration of agri-environmental indicators in the model framework enables a multi-criteria optimization and the calculation of trade-offs. Optimization runs for the experimental farm show the complex interactions which occur when the farm considers environmental concerns in the objective function. Trade offs and abatement cost curves illustrate the relationship between agri-environmental indicators and economic returns of the farm. Here, soil erosion, nitrogen balance, global warming potential and gross energy input were implemented as agri-environmental indicators in MODAM.