An economic assessment of drought effects on three grassland systems in Switzerland
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
An economic assessment of drought effects on three grassland systems in Switzerland Robert Finger • Anna Katarina Gilgen Ulrich E. Prechsl • Nina Buchmann
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Received: 14 April 2012 / Accepted: 25 August 2012 / Published online: 11 September 2012 Ó Springer-Verlag 2012
Abstract This paper analyzes the economic impacts of summer drought on Swiss grassland production. We combine field trial data from drought experiments in three different grasslands in Switzerland with site-specific information on economic costs and benefits. The analysis focuses on the economic implications of drought effects on grassland yields as well as grassland composition. In agreement with earlier studies, we found rather heterogeneous yield effects of drought on Swiss grassland systems, with significantly reduced yields as a response to drought at the lowland and sub-alpine sites, but increased yields at the wetter pre-alpine site. Relative yield losses were highest at the sub-alpine site (with annual yield losses of up to 37 %). However, because income from grassland production at extensive sites relies to a large extent on ecological direct payments, even large yield losses had only limited implications in terms of relative profit reductions. In contrast, negative drought impacts at the most productive, intensively managed lowland site were dominant, with average annual drought-induced profit margin reductions of about 28 %. This is furthermore emphasized if analyzing the farm level perspective of drought impacts. Combining site-specific effects at the farm level, we found that in particular farms with high shares of lowland grassland sites suffer from
R. Finger (&) Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] A. K. Gilgen Institute of Plant Sciences and Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland U. E. Prechsl N. Buchmann Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
summer droughts in terms of farm-level fodder production and profit margins. Moreover, our results showed that the higher competitiveness of weeds (broad-leaved dock) under drought conditions will require increasing attention on weed control measures in future grassland production systems. Taking into account that the risk of drought occurrence is expected to increase in the coming years, additional instruments to cope with drought risks in fodder production and finally farmers’ income have to be developed. Keywords Drought Grassland Weeds Yield Economic costs and benefits
Introduction Changes in climatic conditions in Europe are projected to include increasing temperatures and decreasing amounts of summer precipitation (Christensen et al. 2007; Frei et al. 2006). In line with these effects, the probability of summer drought occurrence is expected to increase in the next decades (e.g., Calanca 2007; Sheffield and Wood 2008). However, summer droughts are not only an expected phenomenon under future climate, but are already a problem under current clima
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