Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
regions. This survey concentrates on economic data for crop farming as well as on
livestock and policy variables. Data needs for filling in the Simple Survey are limited,
and required data can be readily derived from national or regional publications.
The Simple Survey's structure includes one part for each topic: livestock, crop
farming and policies. Livestock is divided into one sheet each for beef cattle, dairy
cattle, small ruminants for dairy, small ruminants for meat and grassland. Data for
three intensities of livestock production can be entered. In the crop part, there is one
variable list that must be filled in for all major crops based on regional FADN data.
Crop rotations are entered in a separate survey sheet. The major difference
compared with the detailed survey is that simple survey does not contain informa-
tion on the timing of operations. The policy part consists of three single sub-parts
with different structures, referring to CAP compensation payments, cross-compliance
and agri-environmental measures as well as national subsidies.
Data Storage and Checking
Both surveys are server-based tools for which users only have to install a small
application on their own computer. Entered data are directly stored in a PostgreSQL
database server. Data from these databases are uploaded into the integrated
database of SEAMLESS (Janssen et al.
2009)
. To facilitate error checking of
entered data, there are several overviews provided in the surveys that can be opened
from the graphical user interfaces.
Generating Alternative Activities
Purpose
Two components are used to define management operations of alternative activities:
(i) PEG generating rotations; and
(ii) PTG generating management operations and associated inputs for rotations.
Production Enterprise Generator
PEG is a tool to generate feasible sets of crop rotations of farms based on crop
suitability filters, such as soil and climate characteristics and specific agronomic,
rotation filters for annual arable crops. For example, timeliness rules avoid the
generation of rotations in which crops are sown before the preceding crop is
harvested. These pre-screening suitability filters limit the number of crop rotations for
which production techniques need to be defined and the number of simulations to
be carried out by APES.
