Economic evaluation of agricultural land to assess land use changes

Abstract

Land-use models express the relationship between various driving forces of land-use changes and are increasingly employed in practical applications to predict possible future land uses. The relationship between the agricultural land market and land-use changes is often neglected in such models. The objective of this study is to assess the production values of agricultural land to be integrated in an operational land-use model with the aim to improve understanding of land-use changes in all 28 European Union countries. This economic evaluation of agricultural land is based on the Net Present Value (NPV) method, a method that aims at uncovering the operational production values of land rather than real estate market value. The scientific relevance of this work is the development of a comprehensive methodology for the economic evaluation of agricultural land uses in different EU countries, the integration of economic production values of land to the local suitability approach in the studied land-use model and the provision of a EU-wide database of the NPVs of agricultural land uses, including various energy crops.