Development of agriculture in the Greifensee region

An agricultural sector model was developed as an integral element of the Greifensee project. It was designed to assess medium and long-term developments in agriculture and land use and to evaluate policy measures. The model exhibits a high degree of spatial detail which aids the assessment of ecological effects. This article presents the optimisation model which was developed and assesses developments in agricultural structures and land use based on two scenarios for the year 2011. The model calculations show that, under the anticipated basic conditions, by 2011 agricultural exploitation in the Greifensee region will be far more extensive than it is today. Developments in numbers of livestock, use of land and thus also the ecological compensation areas, will not depend solely on the assumed prices, but also to a large extent on the farmer’s opportunity labour costs.