Gabriele Mack
Biographic Data
| ID | 3588183 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gabriele Mack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gabriele |
| FAMILY NAME | Mack |
| SIGNATURE | MACK G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Agroscope |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
A holistic assessment of farmers' intention to adopt agroecological practices – The case of Swiss grassland
Agroecology provides a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture. Although the concept is gaining increasing interest, there is a lack of knowledge regarding farmers' intentions to adopt agroecological practices, and existing studies do not account for its holistic approach. We analyze farmers' intentions to adopt agroecological practices across four key elements of agroecology: diversity, synergy, efficiency, and recycling. We assess a wide r…
South Africa’s land redistribution
South Africa’s land redistribution aims to redress the historical injustices of apartheid. This paper evaluates the efficacy of an agent-based model to support and refine the process. Using the Impacts of Land Use Patterns in South Africa model, developed from surveys of 658 commercial farmers and 833 commercially oriented smallholders, we simulate three scenarios: the current willing seller, willing buyer mechanism as our baseline, a second scen…
Landscape features on farms
The Effect of Swiss Free Trade Agreements on Agricultural Trade
As a country highly dependent on imports, Switzerland has many free trade agreements (FTAs) that liberalise trade barriers. We assess how these agreements affect Swiss agricultural imports at different margins of trade adjustment. We estimate reduced‐form gravity models using agricultural trade data for 202 partner countries from 2004 to 2022. We find that Swiss FTAs increase agricultural import values by 8.75%, decrease import prices by 3%, incr…
Consumer support of policy measures to increase sustainability in food consumption
Farmer identities and permanent grassland management
Permanent grassland (PG) provides multiple ecosystem services. However, there is increasing concern regarding the decreased multifunctionality of PGs, including those located in Europe. The decreased PG multifunctionality has been attributed to the increased intensity of PG management, where decision‐making is influenced by farmers' relevant behavioural intentions and self‐identities. In order to investigate how farmer identities can translate in…
Improving the understanding of farmers’ non-compliance with agricultural policy regulations
To reduce the negative impacts of agricultural production, Switzerland and the EU introduced environmental and animal welfare regulations in their direct payment policy schemes. Compliance with these regulations is monitored, and fines are imposed if deficiencies in implementation are identified. Non-compliance with these regulations reduces the effectiveness of direct payment measures and creates public and private administrative transaction cos…
Tipping points and farmer decision-making in European permanent grassland (PG) agricultural systems
Permanent grasslands (PG) provide multifunctional ecosystem services (ES) in Europe and globally, which are threatened by both increased farming intensity and land use change in marginal areas. Farm management decisions can represent critical thresholds, or behavioural “tipping points”, in the agricultural system. Decisions are influenced by a combination of agronomic, policy and social factors. Transformation of PG systems can be facilitated thr…
Citizens’ perceptions of agricultural policy goals—evidence from Switzerland
Agricultural policy goals should be legitimised by the population, as agriculture is an important recipient of governmental support in Europe. Questions arise as to how people assess these policy goals, which factors affect the perception of agricultural policy goals and to what extent cultural differences influence this assessment. We address these questions by conducting an online survey among 1,542 respondents in the German-, French- and Itali…
How farmers’ self-identities affect agri-environmental transition in Grassland Use
Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analys…
Perceived feasibility of sward management options in permanent grassland of Alpine regions and expected effects on delivery of ecosystem services
Agriculture in Alpine regions plays an important role for multiple ecosystem services (ES) supplied from permanent grassland (PG). This paper investigates the feasibility of sward renewal, overseeding, and rising plate meters on PG for the Swiss Alpine region and analyses their expected effects on ES supply. Sward renewal and overseeding are management options implemented in response to a decline of grassland yields and nutritive value or sward d…
Swiss Parks of National Importance as model regions of sustainable development – An economic success story for farmers
Evidence on the socioeconomic effects of the protected area status of affected regions is mixed. While some studies highlight positive outcomes for these regions, others point in the opposite direction. Consequently, this study aimed to add to the discourse on whether protected area status fosters the socioeconomic development of these regions or not. The study focuses on the agricultural sector in protected areas, because this sector is of parti…
The cost of farmers’ administrative burdens due to cross-compliance obligations
Administrative burdens are transaction costs due to administrative activities conducted solely because of regulation requirements. Since the shift from market support to cross-compliance-based direct payments, farmers increasingly complain about substantial administrative burdens related to the direct payment scheme. Using data from a survey among 100 Swiss farmers, group comparisons and regression analyses revealed significant differences in wor…
Determinants of the decision to build up excessive food stocks in the Covid-19 crisis
In 2020, the first COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in food panic buying and excessive food stockpiling across many countries around the world. Many governments recommend keeping emergency food stocks for three to ten days for times of potential shortages in food supply. Based on data from an online survey conducted among Swiss inhabitants, we investigated the effect of knowledge level and stockpiling behaviour according to governmental stockpiling re…
Effects of EU rural development funds on newly established enterprises in Romania's rural areas
This study estimates the causal effects of EU Rural Development funds for micro-enterprises and tourism activities on the number of newly established enterprises in the treated rural communities of Romania (programme period 2007–2013). Using a combined database from several sources at the local administrative unit (LAU2) level, both the average treatment effects and average treatment intensity effects are analysed based on Propensity score matchi…
Reduction of nitrogen pollution in agriculture through nitrogen surplus quotas
Nitrogen (N) pollution has mostly been controlled using command-and-control instruments. However, nitrogen surplus permits (NSPs), which are tradeable, can be more cost-efficient in addressing the problem. To model this instrument, we calculated the individual marginal abatement cost curve for a sample of about 3,400 Swiss farms using farm-optimization models implemented in the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland. We also used SWISSla…
Towards a viable farm size – determining a viable household income for emerging farmers in South Africa's Land Redistribution Programme
The purpose of this article is to propose an improved methodology to determine a viable farm size for potential emerging farmers as land reform beneficiaries. Land reform in South Africa has been criticised because of poor implementation and slow pace, accompanied by poor productivity in redistributed land. To explain this, it has been suggested that commercial farms are too large for emerging farmers who have little or no experience in commercia…
Cultural innovation, aspirations and success among smallholders in former homelands of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa
Purpose After unsuccessful attempts of South African governments to carry out a land reform that distributes farmland more justly, this study aims to undertake a stronger segmentation of potential beneficiaries for a better targeting of future reforms. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model has been developed along the axes of cultural innovation and aspirations that identifies the segment of current smallholders who would most likely re…
Determinants for the Implementation of Action-, Result- and Multi-Actor-Oriented Agri-Environment Schemes in Switzerland
The Effect of Administrative Burden on Farmers’ Perceptions of Cross‐Compliance‐Based Direct Payment Policy
In this study, we test the hypothesis that farmers’ experienced administrative burden affects their policy perceptions. Based on survey data from 808 randomly chosen Swiss farmers, a latent class approach is used to depict the heterogeneity of farmers' policy perceptions. We find that 20 percent of farmers are grumpy with the current direct payment policy, 23 percent are supporters, and 57 percent are indifferent, meaning that the latter group of…
Direct and Indirect Economic Incentives to Mitigate Nitrogen Surpluses
The reduction of nitrogen (N) surplus is an ongoing topic in the agri-environmental policies of many countries in the developed world. The introduction of N balance estimation in agricultural sector models is therefore pertinent and requires an interdisciplinary approach. We extended the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland with an N farm gate balance estimation to pre-evaluate the introduction of a levy on N inputs, particularly a lev…
Pathways to Truth
Simulation results can be highly sensitive to the way agents are upscaled to a larger organizational and spatial level. This paper tests an ex-post validation method for forecasting models by using old base years and forecasting into recent years for which observed data is already available. Our case in point is a comparison between different upscaling methods in the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland. It is shown that individual-far…
Seasonal alpine grazing trends in Switzerland
Improving the understanding of farmers’ non-compliance with agricultural policy regulations
To reduce the negative impacts of agricultural production, Switzerland and the EU introduced environmental and animal welfare regulations in their direct payment policy schemes. Compliance with these regulations is monitored, and fines are imposed if deficiencies in implementation are identified. Non-compliance with these regulations reduces the effectiveness of direct payment measures and creates public and private administrative transaction cos…
Seasonal alpine grazing trends in Switzerland
Consumer support of policy measures to increase sustainability in food consumption
Citizens’ perceptions of agricultural policy goals—evidence from Switzerland
Agricultural policy goals should be legitimised by the population, as agriculture is an important recipient of governmental support in Europe. Questions arise as to how people assess these policy goals, which factors affect the perception of agricultural policy goals and to what extent cultural differences influence this assessment. We address these questions by conducting an online survey among 1,542 respondents in the German-, French- and Itali…
Tipping points and farmer decision-making in European permanent grassland (PG) agricultural systems
Permanent grasslands (PG) provide multifunctional ecosystem services (ES) in Europe and globally, which are threatened by both increased farming intensity and land use change in marginal areas. Farm management decisions can represent critical thresholds, or behavioural “tipping points”, in the agricultural system. Decisions are influenced by a combination of agronomic, policy and social factors. Transformation of PG systems can be facilitated thr…
How farmers’ self-identities affect agri-environmental transition in Grassland Use
Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analys…
Swiss Parks of National Importance as model regions of sustainable development – An economic success story for farmers
Evidence on the socioeconomic effects of the protected area status of affected regions is mixed. While some studies highlight positive outcomes for these regions, others point in the opposite direction. Consequently, this study aimed to add to the discourse on whether protected area status fosters the socioeconomic development of these regions or not. The study focuses on the agricultural sector in protected areas, because this sector is of parti…
Seasonal alpine grazing trends in Switzerland
Pathways to Truth
Simulation results can be highly sensitive to the way agents are upscaled to a larger organizational and spatial level. This paper tests an ex-post validation method for forecasting models by using old base years and forecasting into recent years for which observed data is already available. Our case in point is a comparison between different upscaling methods in the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland. It is shown that individual-far…
Direct and Indirect Economic Incentives to Mitigate Nitrogen Surpluses
The reduction of nitrogen (N) surplus is an ongoing topic in the agri-environmental policies of many countries in the developed world. The introduction of N balance estimation in agricultural sector models is therefore pertinent and requires an interdisciplinary approach. We extended the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland with an N farm gate balance estimation to pre-evaluate the introduction of a levy on N inputs, particularly a lev…
Cultural innovation, aspirations and success among smallholders in former homelands of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa
Purpose After unsuccessful attempts of South African governments to carry out a land reform that distributes farmland more justly, this study aims to undertake a stronger segmentation of potential beneficiaries for a better targeting of future reforms. Design/methodology/approach A theoretical model has been developed along the axes of cultural innovation and aspirations that identifies the segment of current smallholders who would most likely re…
Determinants for the Implementation of Action-, Result- and Multi-Actor-Oriented Agri-Environment Schemes in Switzerland
The Effect of Administrative Burden on Farmers’ Perceptions of Cross‐Compliance‐Based Direct Payment Policy
In this study, we test the hypothesis that farmers’ experienced administrative burden affects their policy perceptions. Based on survey data from 808 randomly chosen Swiss farmers, a latent class approach is used to depict the heterogeneity of farmers' policy perceptions. We find that 20 percent of farmers are grumpy with the current direct payment policy, 23 percent are supporters, and 57 percent are indifferent, meaning that the latter group of…
Effects of EU rural development funds on newly established enterprises in Romania's rural areas
This study estimates the causal effects of EU Rural Development funds for micro-enterprises and tourism activities on the number of newly established enterprises in the treated rural communities of Romania (programme period 2007–2013). Using a combined database from several sources at the local administrative unit (LAU2) level, both the average treatment effects and average treatment intensity effects are analysed based on Propensity score matchi…
Reduction of nitrogen pollution in agriculture through nitrogen surplus quotas
Nitrogen (N) pollution has mostly been controlled using command-and-control instruments. However, nitrogen surplus permits (NSPs), which are tradeable, can be more cost-efficient in addressing the problem. To model this instrument, we calculated the individual marginal abatement cost curve for a sample of about 3,400 Swiss farms using farm-optimization models implemented in the agent-based agricultural sector model SWISSland. We also used SWISSla…
Towards a viable farm size – determining a viable household income for emerging farmers in South Africa's Land Redistribution Programme
The purpose of this article is to propose an improved methodology to determine a viable farm size for potential emerging farmers as land reform beneficiaries. Land reform in South Africa has been criticised because of poor implementation and slow pace, accompanied by poor productivity in redistributed land. To explain this, it has been suggested that commercial farms are too large for emerging farmers who have little or no experience in commercia…
The cost of farmers’ administrative burdens due to cross-compliance obligations
Administrative burdens are transaction costs due to administrative activities conducted solely because of regulation requirements. Since the shift from market support to cross-compliance-based direct payments, farmers increasingly complain about substantial administrative burdens related to the direct payment scheme. Using data from a survey among 100 Swiss farmers, group comparisons and regression analyses revealed significant differences in wor…
Determinants of the decision to build up excessive food stocks in the Covid-19 crisis
In 2020, the first COVID-19 lockdowns resulted in food panic buying and excessive food stockpiling across many countries around the world. Many governments recommend keeping emergency food stocks for three to ten days for times of potential shortages in food supply. Based on data from an online survey conducted among Swiss inhabitants, we investigated the effect of knowledge level and stockpiling behaviour according to governmental stockpiling re…
Perceived feasibility of sward management options in permanent grassland of Alpine regions and expected effects on delivery of ecosystem services
Agriculture in Alpine regions plays an important role for multiple ecosystem services (ES) supplied from permanent grassland (PG). This paper investigates the feasibility of sward renewal, overseeding, and rising plate meters on PG for the Swiss Alpine region and analyses their expected effects on ES supply. Sward renewal and overseeding are management options implemented in response to a decline of grassland yields and nutritive value or sward d…
Swiss Parks of National Importance as model regions of sustainable development – An economic success story for farmers
Evidence on the socioeconomic effects of the protected area status of affected regions is mixed. While some studies highlight positive outcomes for these regions, others point in the opposite direction. Consequently, this study aimed to add to the discourse on whether protected area status fosters the socioeconomic development of these regions or not. The study focuses on the agricultural sector in protected areas, because this sector is of parti…
Farmer identities and permanent grassland management
Permanent grassland (PG) provides multiple ecosystem services. However, there is increasing concern regarding the decreased multifunctionality of PGs, including those located in Europe. The decreased PG multifunctionality has been attributed to the increased intensity of PG management, where decision‐making is influenced by farmers' relevant behavioural intentions and self‐identities. In order to investigate how farmer identities can translate in…
Improving the understanding of farmers’ non-compliance with agricultural policy regulations
To reduce the negative impacts of agricultural production, Switzerland and the EU introduced environmental and animal welfare regulations in their direct payment policy schemes. Compliance with these regulations is monitored, and fines are imposed if deficiencies in implementation are identified. Non-compliance with these regulations reduces the effectiveness of direct payment measures and creates public and private administrative transaction cos…
Tipping points and farmer decision-making in European permanent grassland (PG) agricultural systems
Permanent grasslands (PG) provide multifunctional ecosystem services (ES) in Europe and globally, which are threatened by both increased farming intensity and land use change in marginal areas. Farm management decisions can represent critical thresholds, or behavioural “tipping points”, in the agricultural system. Decisions are influenced by a combination of agronomic, policy and social factors. Transformation of PG systems can be facilitated thr…
Citizens’ perceptions of agricultural policy goals—evidence from Switzerland
Agricultural policy goals should be legitimised by the population, as agriculture is an important recipient of governmental support in Europe. Questions arise as to how people assess these policy goals, which factors affect the perception of agricultural policy goals and to what extent cultural differences influence this assessment. We address these questions by conducting an online survey among 1,542 respondents in the German-, French- and Itali…
How farmers’ self-identities affect agri-environmental transition in Grassland Use
Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analys…
South Africa’s land redistribution
South Africa’s land redistribution aims to redress the historical injustices of apartheid. This paper evaluates the efficacy of an agent-based model to support and refine the process. Using the Impacts of Land Use Patterns in South Africa model, developed from surveys of 658 commercial farmers and 833 commercially oriented smallholders, we simulate three scenarios: the current willing seller, willing buyer mechanism as our baseline, a second scen…
Landscape features on farms
The Effect of Swiss Free Trade Agreements on Agricultural Trade
As a country highly dependent on imports, Switzerland has many free trade agreements (FTAs) that liberalise trade barriers. We assess how these agreements affect Swiss agricultural imports at different margins of trade adjustment. We estimate reduced‐form gravity models using agricultural trade data for 202 partner countries from 2004 to 2022. We find that Swiss FTAs increase agricultural import values by 8.75%, decrease import prices by 3%, incr…
Consumer support of policy measures to increase sustainability in food consumption
A holistic assessment of farmers' intention to adopt agroecological practices – The case of Swiss grassland
Agroecology provides a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture. Although the concept is gaining increasing interest, there is a lack of knowledge regarding farmers' intentions to adopt agroecological practices, and existing studies do not account for its holistic approach. We analyze farmers' intentions to adopt agroecological practices across four key elements of agroecology: diversity, synergy, efficiency, and recycling. We assess a wide r…
Economics (17 works) · Agriculture (13 works) · Geography (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Agricultural Economics and Policy (10 works) · Ecology (8 works) · Public economics (7 works) · Agricultural Innovations and Practices (6 works) · Environmental Science (6 works) · Natural resource economics (6 works)