Peter Zander

• PhD
• Speaker of research area “Economics of Sustainable Land Use“ at Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research

Coherent spatial data are crucial for informed land use and regional planning decisions, particularly in the context of securing a crisis-proof food supply and adapting to climate change. This dataset provides spatial information on climate-robust and high-yield agricultural arable land in Brandenburg, Germany, based on the results of a classificat...

The integration of ecosystem services (ESs) valuation into agricultural policy frameworks is critical for fostering sustainable land management practices. This study leverages the redesigned version of the bio-economic farm model MODAM (Multi-Objective Decision Support Tool for Agro-Ecosystem Management) to estimate the shadow prices of ESs, enabli...

Context Smallholder farmers in semi-arid West Africa face challenges such as weather variability, soil infertility, and inadequate market infrastructure, hindering their adoption of improved farming practices. Economic risks associated with uncertain weather, production and market conditions often result in measures such as selling assets and withd...

Ensuring a crisis-proof food supply has become a key political issue. In Germany, official spatial planning allows the use of priority and reserved areas to secure land for agricultural use and regional food supply. The focus should be particularly on climate-resilient areas that also have a stable yield potential in the future. This paper suppleme...

Semi-natural grasslands (SNGLs) in Estonia are threatened by abandonment. This threat is leading to concerns about the degradation of biodiversity within grassland communities. Despite the high relevance of economic incentives in this context, how such incentives influence land managers’ decision-making regarding the agricultural use of SNGLs has n...

Assessing the Agronomic and Environmental Impacts of Grass Rotations in Cropping Systems: A Simulation Study in Muencheberg, Germany.

Many studies have explored farmers' perspectives on biodiversity and ecosystem services, but fewer qualitative and cross-country comparisons exist. We develop a socio-ecological system to analyse agricultural landscape services, biodiversity, and drivers that have affected these services in recent decades. Via a systematic stake-holder mapping and...

Climate-induced production risk is expected to increase in the future. This study assesses the effectiveness of adapting crop rotations on arable farms in Brandenburg as a tool to enhance climate resilience. Two risk-minimizing measures are investigated: crop diversification and the inclusion of irrigated crops. Based on state-wide simulated yield...

The agricultural land represents the most important form of land use, accounting for almost 48% of the European land area. Europe- Despite its relatively small share of global agriculture land total area (9.8%), has been one of the world’s largest and most productive suppliers of food and fibre. Europe accounted for 17.6% of the global cereal produ...

Diverse agricultural land uses are a typical feature of multifunctional landscapes. The uncertain change in the drivers of global land use, such as climate, market and policy technology and demography, challenges the long-term management of agricultural diversification. As these global drivers also affect smaller scales, it is important to capture...

Smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana face challenges due to weather variability and market volatility, hindering their ability to invest in sustainable intensification options. Modeling can help understand the relationships between productivity, environmental, and economical aspects, but few models have explored the effects of weather variability...

Multifunctional and diversified agriculture can address diverging pressures and demands by simultaneously enhancing productivity, biodiversity, and the provision of ecosystem services. The use of digital technologies can support this by designing and managing resource-efficient and context-specific agricultural systems. We present the Digital Agric...

This scoping review looks at the literature published on the economic performance of temperate agroforestry systems in Europe and North America and tries to answers the following research questions: How does agro-forestry (AF) perform economically compared to agriculture and/or forestry? And are there any particular system characteristics or condit...

This note summarizes the results of interviews with farmers in Germany to identify the motivations and challenges that impact farmers’ adoption of practices that improve biodiversity. All interviews were conducted either by phone or on Zoom. Respondents were identified through contacts provided by Bayer AG, the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Lands...

The saffron sector as a sustainable farming system plays a primordial agro-ecological and socio-economic role in the Anti-Atlas region in Morocco. Under the Green Morocco Policy, the saffron area has more than tripled; however, productivity is still very low. To evaluate the efficiency of Moroccan saffron farming and its determinants, we estimated...

Although sunflower production in Tanzania is increasing, smallholder farmers still face a number of constraints that result in poor yields. Lack or inadequate nutrient supply is one of the main factors limiting crop productivity in Tanzania. However, mineral fertilizer is not always easily available and not economically affordable by smallholder fa...

Orchard meadows, a traditional agroforestry system in Switzerland combining the dual use fruit and fodder production, are declining, even though the farmland managed under agri-environmental schemes (AES) has been expanding. Despite increasing interest in agroforestry research for developing sustainable agriculture, it is poorly understood how subs...

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) aimed at promoting farmland biodiversity are a key agricultural policy instrument in Switzerland. While the share of farmland managed under AES has expanded, traditional orchard meadows, regarded as agrobiodiversity hotspots, are declining. It is not clear yet what role AES play in maintaining orchard meadows, consi...

Dairy productivity in sub-Saharan Africa remains below its potential, while there is an increasing demand for milk from its growing population. This study focuses on the adoption potential of improved, more nutritive and productive forages by smallholder farmers in the Tanga region of Tanzania. By applying a qualitative mixed-method approach, inclu...

Studying landscape change has taken on increased importance, for instance, in the context of enhancing the sustainable intensification of agricultural production. As sustainability-oriented landscape research necessitates inter- and transdisciplinary approaches, the influence that researchers exert through constructing and applying conceptual bases...

Provisioning ecosystem services play a vital role in sustaining human well-being. Agro-ecosystems contribute a significant share of these services, besides food and fodder and also fuel and fibre as well as regulating and cultural ecosystem services. Until now, the indication of provisioning ecosystem services of agro-ecosystems has been based almo...

Context: Increasing salinity levels demand adaptative and transformative changes in farming systems in regions affected by saltwater intrusion intensified by global climate change. The study area, a narrow delta affected by salinity intrusion due to rising sea levels as well as by diminishing rainfall during the dry season in north-central coastal...

Regional impact studies are needed to explore possible adaptation options to climate change. We estimated impacts and adaptation options for future scenarios that feature different assumptions regarding climate, cropping pattern and access to irrigation with two bio-economic farm models. Farm profit, soil organic matter balance and labor input are...

Across Sub-Saharan Africa, agricultural practices for sustainable intensification need to be up-scaled from project interventions to institutional mainstreaming. However, several constraints, including a general lack of resources and knowledge, limited institutional support and challenging market conditions hamper this process. The objective of thi...

In spite of positive expectations for environmental protection, payments for ecosystem services (PES) can bring about unintended disturbances to rural livelihoods. Based on resilience thinking, this article investigates livelihood resilience building at farm level through the interaction between farm adaptation and disturbances induced by China’s G...

The purpose of our study is to evaluate the impact of saltwater intrusion on the productivity and technical efficiency (TE) of rice farms in Central Vietnam using the stochastic frontier (SF) production function. In contrast to existing studies, this research quantitatively analyses rice variety and season-differentiated impact of soil salinity (as...

Increasing soil salinisation is an environmental stressor that causes significant reduction in crop productivity and increases the risk of farming and hence reduces the cultivated land area. For these reasons, soil salinisation is considered to be one of the most serious problems threatening food security. In the north central coastal region of Vie...

Combining resource-based theory and social exchange theory, this paper studies the role that political connections play in maintaining the sustainability of enterprises’ R&D investment. Furthermore, this paper discusses the moderating effect of policy burdens and ownership on political connections and R&D investment. Based on the Euler equation mod...

Landscape services are inevitably interlinked with human wellbeing. It is essential to assess landscape services and multifunctionality from both supply and demand points of view toward sustainable landscape management. This study focused on the spatiotemporal variations of the supply, demand, and budget of landscape services in suburban Shanghai,...

Payments for ecosystem services (PES) are often used as a tool for arresting land degradation and desertification. Nevertheless, deeper investigation of farm household systems (FHSs) changes during PES projects is rather limited. It is important to understand how various FHSs evolve with the divergent resource allocation strategies aiming at liveli...

Der Klimawandel und die Globalisierung der Märkte beeinflussen zunehmend unsere Gesellschaft. Ein zukunftsfähiges, nachhaltiges Landmanagement hat diesen Entwicklungen Rechnung zu tragen. Es muss sich neu ausrichten und dabei seine Ziele und Maßnahmen so konzipieren, dass es flexibel auf sich ändernde Rahmenbedingungen reagieren kann. Im Verbundpro...

Sunflower is one of the major oilseeds produced in Tanzania, but due to insufficient domestic production more than half of the country's demand is imported. The improvement of the sunflower food value chain (FVC) understanding is important to ensure an increase in the production, availability, and quality of edible oil. In order to analyse causes a...

The research aims to propose a conceptual framework to allow the combined use of different models participating in the MACSUR project to improve the understanding of the sunflower FVC in Tanzania, especially within a context of food security improvement.

There is a great demand for high-protein materials for livestock feed in Europe and European agriculture has a deficit of about 70% high-protein materials of which 87% is met by imported soybean and soy meal. This reflects the fact that grain legumes are currently under represented in European agriculture and produced on only 1.5% of the arable lan...

Legume cultivation in Europe has declined in recent decades due to decreased farm-level economic competitiveness compared with cereal and oil crop production. The increase in soybean prices in recent years and the public benefits expected from diversified production systems are reasons to reconsider legumes in Europe. Farm-level economic assessment...

The article describes how economic resilience of farming households can be measured using a composite indicator of revealed adaptive actions, and investigates how capabilities of farm households to recombine human, financial, natural and physical capitals are linked to observed economic resilience to land set-aside interventions. The land set-aside...

Die UNO hat 2016 zum Internationalen Jahr der Hülsenfrüchte erklärt. Kein Wunder, schließlich leisten Leguminosen eine Menge für unser Ökosystem. Bisher finden wir sie noch selten auf dem Acker. Das sollte sich ändern, meinen Moritz Reckling und Kollegen und haben die Rolle von Leguminosen neu bewertet.

Smallholder agriculture contributes to the rural economy of China’s Loess Plateau, and the Grain for Green project (GGP) is a land retirement policy causing land use change in smallholder agricultural systems (SASs). The article attempts to identify whether the GGP have positive or negative impacts on SAS in Ansai County, China’s Loess Plateau. Usi...

This study presents the development and evaluation of a conceptual model for landscape management in the Himalayas of India following several years’ research in the region. Data were gathered through empirical studies and remote sensing in space and time and subsequently analyzed, and some examples are presented. The theory is described and the res...

Sustainable development of agriculture is at the core of agricultural policy debates in Europe. There is a consensus that diversification of cropping would support sustainable development. However, a reduction in legume cultivation has been observed in the EU during the last decades. This decline has induced, in turn, a deficit of proteins and a re...

Europe's agriculture is highly specialized, dependent on external inputs and responsible for negative environmental impacts. Legume crops are grown on less than 2% of the arable land and more than 70% of the demand for protein feed supplement is imported from overseas. The integration of legumes into cropping systems has the potential to contribute...

Europe's agriculture is highly specialized, dependent on external inputs and responsible for negative environmental impacts. Legume crops are grown on less than 2% of the arable land and more than 70% of the demand for protein feed supplement is imported from overseas. The integration of legumes into cropping systems has the potential to contribute...

Methods are needed for the design and evaluation of cropping systems, in order to test the effects of introducing or reintroducing crops into rotations. The interaction of legumes with other crops (rotational effects) requires an assessment at the cropping system scale. The objective of this work is to introduce a cropping system framework to asses...

This article analyzes agricultural sustainability in the context of land degradation, rural poverty and social inequality, taking China’s Loess Hills as an example. The analysis attempts to understand the multi-dimensionality of sustainability at the farm level and its relationship with physical-socio-economic-infrastructural-technological framewor...

This article analyzes agricultural sustainability in the context of land degradation, rural poverty and social inequality, taking China's Loess Hills as an example. The analysis attempts to understand the multi-dimensionality of sustainability at the farm level and its relationship with physical-socio-economic-infrastructural-technological framewor...

The impact of climate change and increased irrigation area on future hydrologic and agro-economic conditions was analysed for a representative basin in northeastern Germany using an expanded version of the WBalMO (water balance model) for water management. The model expansion represents various temporally and spatially differentiated irrigation wat...

Europe has become heavily dependent on soya bean imports, entailing trade agreements and quality standards that do not satisfy the European citizen’s expectations. White, yellow, and narrow-leafed lupins are native European legumes that can become true alternatives to soya bean, given their elevated and high-quality protein content, potential healt...

The environmental impacts of land use vary regionally. Differences in geomorphology, climate, landscape structure, and biotope inventories are regarded as the main causes of this variation. We present a methodological approach for identifying regional responses in land use type to large-scale changes and the implications for the provision of habita...

Grain legume production offers multiple environmental benefits and can enhance sustainability of European farming, but their production area is declining constantly. Grain legume competitiveness is frequently constrained by lower gross margins compared to agronomically suitable cropping alternatives, but it can be improved by appreciating their abi...

Decisions for agricultural management are taken at farm scale. However, such decisions may well impact upon regional sustainability. Two of the likely agricultural management responses to future challenges are extended use of irrigation and increased production of energy crops. The drivers for these are high commodity prices and subsidy policies fo...

Legumes grown in crop rotations have positive agronomic and economic impacts that enhance the sustainability of European cropping systems (Peoples et al., 2009). However, legume crops play a decreasing role in European crop rotations despite their positive rotational effects (Zander et al., submitted). The common crop-level perception neglect rotat...

While it is well known that legume crops have many positive environmental effects in rotations, farmers and agronomists need assistance with understanding the possibilities for incorporating them into arable and forage rotations and assessing the financial risks and benefits of doing so. Hence, Reckling et al. (2014) generated rotations for five ca...

Despite the reported benefits of conservation agriculture (CA), its wider up-scaling in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has remained fairly limited. This paper shows how a newly developed qualitative expert assessment approach for CA adoption (QAToCA) was applied to determine its adoption potential in SSA. CA adoption potential is not a predictor of obser...

While it is developing rapidly throughout Germany, bioenergy provision is open to different development opportunities. To understand the cause–effect relationships that drive bioenergy development and explore different development options and their effects on regional development, qualitative scenarios have been drafted using the Görlitz district a...

Preface Vorwort Der vorliegende Leitfaden wurde im Rahmen des Projektes „LÖBESTEIN“ erstellt. „LÖBESTEIN“ steht für Landmanagementsysteme, Ökosystemdienstleistungen und Biodiversität – Entwicklung von Steuerungsinstrumenten am Beispiel des Anbaues nachwachsender Rohstoffe. Das Projekt wurde durch das Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMB...

This study provides an overview of the development and environmental effects of protein crop production in Europe. Nine policy options for supporting protein crops are presented: six inside the CAP, and three outside. We recommend an integrated policy approach combining the inclusion of protein crops into greening measures, investment in research a...

Conservation agriculture (CA) is often promoted as a set of cropping practices to reduce soil erosion and maintain soil fertility, while decreasing production costs and increasing crop yields. However, CA adoption is extremely low in Africa. Most investigations on constraints of its adoption leave out (i) the characteristics of CA as an emerging in...

This paper presents a whole farm bio-economic modelling approach for the assessment and optimisation of amphibian conservation conditions applied at the example of a large scale organic farm in North-Eastern Germany. The assessment focuses mainly on the habitat quality as affected by conservation measures such as through specific adapted crop produ...

In a continent facing a fast increasing population, smallholder farming in Africa is exposed to double challenge: 1) to increase food production and, 2) to preserve natural resources. While conventional tillage-based agriculture has been held accountable for soil degradation, Conservation Agriculture (CA) based on minimal or no-tillage is increasin...

Legume crops play a decreasing role in European agriculture despite their potential benefits for the environment and farming system. Within the EU-funded FP7 project LEGUME FUTURES, potential benefits of legume-supported crop rotations are evaluated in five NUTS 2 case-study regions across Europe (South-Muntenia, RO; Calabria, IT; Eastern Scotland,...

The direct payment system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income transfers to European farmers. Recently, several countries including England and Sweden have advocated the elimination of direct payments after 2013. The extent to which an elimination of direct payments would affect the land use dynamics in Europe including impacts o...

Agricultural soils are being increasingly targeted by European Union (EU) policy measures including measures within the Common Agricultural Policy. Member states have implemented a variety of measures at the national and regional level, which regulate the use of soils or offer incentives for the adoption of soil conservation practices. However, inf...

There is a lack of knowledge about the effectiveness and efficiency of soil conservation policies in agriculture and there is a little understanding of how policy measures should be designed to encourage farmers to adopt soil conservation practices. This paper analyses institutional settings surrounding agricultural soil management in ten European...

The direct payment system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income transfers to European farmers. Recently, several countries including England and Sweden have advocated the elimination of direct payments after 2013. The extent to which an elimination of direct payments would affect the land use dynamics in Europe including impacts o...

The aim of this chapter is to present a bio-economic modelling framework established to provide insight into the complex nature of agricultural systems and to assess the impacts of agricultural and environmental policies and technological innovations. This framework consists of a Farm System Simulator (FSSIM) using mathematical programming that can...

Bio-economic farm models are tools to evaluate ex-post or to assess ex-ante the impact of policy and technology change on agriculture, economics and environment. Recently, various BEFMs have been developed, often for one purpose or location, but hardly any of these models are re-used later for other purposes or locations. The Farm System Simulator...

This study aims at presenting a conceptual model for landscape management in the Himalayan region of India, using quantitative/mathematical approach. Keeping in view the requirement, (based on fifteen years empirical field work in the Himalayan region and as well as literature survey) the MODAM (Multiple Objectives Decision Support Tools for Landsc...

This special issue comprise 8 papers providing information on: policy relevance of three integrated assessment tools (a comparison with specific reference to agricultural policies); integrated assessment of agricultural policies with dynamic land use change modelling; an IT perspective on integrated environmental modelling; exploring the future of...

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a system of market support instruments, direct income transfers, and rural development measures, has been put through an ongoing reform process in recent decades. This paper introduces three policy impact assessment tools (SIAT, SEAMLESS-IF, MEA-Scope tool) and analyses how these tools have responded to a numbe...

We used a farm-level modeling approach to estimate on-farm compliance costs and environmental effects of a grassland extensification scheme in the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Germany. The behavior of the regional farm population (n = 585) consisting of different farm types with different production orientations and grassland types was modeled...

This study presents an integrated assessment approach for the sustainable development of agricultural landscapes. The approach evaluates single agricultural production practices by means of environmental, economic and social indicators. To implement the approach, a mixed method was employed that combines modelling techniques and survey methods. The...

The recent and upcoming reforms of the Common Agricultural Policies (CAPs) aim at strengthening the multifunctional role of agriculture, acknowledging the differences in economic, environmental and social potentials within European regions. This paper presents results from an integrated assessment of existing and future policies within the framewor...

The MEA-Scope project developed, and applied a modelling approach that allows for the ex ante assessment of sustainability impacts of new policies, technologies and market changes. Thereby, the agricultural production at farm level and its effect on social, economic and environmental assets under changing circumstances is examined. The MEA-Scope mo...

In this chapter we present an analysis of whether the MEA-Scope ex-ante impact assessment Tool fulfils the need of the potential end-users with regard to the representativeness of indicator results for non-commodity outputs (NCOs) in relation to end-user demand. The end-user demand for NCO indicators is explained, and compared with the NCO indicato...

SEAMLESS (System for Environmental and Agricultural Modelling; Linking European Science and Society) integrated project, EU 6th Framework Programme, contract no. 010036-2

Die Unterschiede zwischen Regionen in Europa mussen bei der Umsetzung von Politikansatzen berucksichtigt werden. Das gilt insbesondere fur die verschiedenen Faktoren, die die Landwirtschaft beeinflussen. Durch eine integrierte Modellierung kann die Anpassung politischer Entscheidungen unterstutzt werden.

Die Unterschiede zwischen Regionen in Europa müssen bei der Umsetzung von Politikansätzen berücksichtigt werden. Das gilt insbesondere für die verschiedenen Faktoren, die die Landwirtschaft beeinflussen. Durch eine integrierte Modellierung kann die Anpassung politischer Entscheidungen unterstützt werden.

Multifunctionality of Agriculture (MFA) is a concept that supports the recognition of complex interdependencies between different resources, production processes and outputs of agricultural land use. Political decision making within a sustainable development frame requires extensive information about these interrelationships in order to analyse the...