Multifunctional agriculture: evaluation of non-production benefits using the Analytical Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Sustainable land use in agriculture involves the management of economic, environmental, and social services. In order to make the widely accepted concept of sustainable multifunctional agriculture operative for the design of agricultural policies, it is necessary to estimate the social demand for non-production outputs. This paper addresses the issue of matching agricultural policy with public preferences and willingness to pay for the possible non-production benefits that agriculture may deliver. Given the diversity of economic, social and environmental services, and the diversity of public needs, the reported study attempts to simplify and evaluate a very complex set of multifunctionality issues and to investigate the policy relevant trade-offs using the combination of the Contingent Valuation (CV) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methods. The results obtained demonstrate the existence of a significant public demand for the investigated non-production outputs included in the multifunctionality concept in the Czech Republic.