DiversGrass

Motivation

Values of species diversity in grassland production – An ecological economic assessment (DiversGrass)

Grasslands are crucial for global food security, cover the majority of the world’s agricultural area and provide – besides feed production – many additional ecosystem services. Previous research has identified positive and stabilizing effects of species diversity on grassland production, e.g. on biomass yields. A key challenge is to transform these findings also into economic terms, i.e., to quantify these potential benefits of species diversity in terms of farmers’ utility and investigate how these effects of SD affect farmers’ behavior. Here, a strong integration of both ecology and agricultural economics is required, although neglected so far.

Objectives

We will develop a novel, interdisciplinary ecological-economic framework to

i) investigate and economically assess species diversity effects on quantity (total biomass) but also on quality (fodder values) components of grassland yields,

ii) focus on the interdependencies between the intensity of grassland use, species diversity, climatic risks (focus on drought) and the special role of climatic extremes, and

iii) to assess interdependencies between insurance mechanisms and agricultural policies and species diversity.