CH-FARMIS 2.0: A Sector-Model to Assess the Economic and Environmental Impacts of Swiss Direct Payment Schemes

Summary

Quantitative sector models are an essential tool to forecast the sector-wide economic effects of agricultural policies. However, to cover ecological effects with economic sector models is still a methodological challenge. This poster describes a promising approach, which is currently implemented at the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) to meet this challenge.
CH-FARMIS is a sector consistent farm group model, which is able to forecast economic impacts of policies on farm, regional and sector-level. In a flexible way, CH-FARMIS is able to split up the farm sector in farm groups according to various characteristics (region, farming system, farm type, etc.). CH-FARMIS is based on positive mathematical programming (PMP) to allow for a realistic reproduction of the Swiss agricultural sector. Currently, CH-FARMIS is augmented in two ways in order to illustrate the environmental impacts of farmers’ decisions and land use: Firstly, intensity levels of farm production are introduced. Secondly, all farm activities and their intensity levels are equipped with ecological indicators, which are derived from LCA data. In an iterative Delphi-procedure, polling a set of competence teams, the LCA data is adapted to the model needs and transposed from farm level to sector level. The following indicators will be implemented in CH-FARMIS 2.0: Biodiversity, water contamination (N, P) and energy use.
The enlarged version of CH-FARMIS will be a flexible tool which can be used for both exante assessments of policy reforms and the quantitative evaluation of single direct payments. CH-FARMIS 2.0 is planned to be operable in mid 2008.