Caught in a Deadlock: Small Ruminant Farming on the Greek Island of Samothrace. The Importance of Regional Contexts for Effective EU Agricultural Policies
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Material and Methods
2.1. The Island Samothrace
2.2. The Conceptual Framework
2.3. Biophysical Assessment of the Livestock System
- For the assessment of feed intake of sheep and goats on Samothrace, we set up the herd and feed rations modules of GLEAM (Global Livestock Environmental Assessment Model) in Excel (For a detailed description of GLEAM, its components and equations, refer to http://www.fao.org/gleam/en/. For a detailed description of equations used for the present study see Supplementary Information: Section 4 and Supplementary Data: Tables S1–S4.) [31]. For the description of this model in Section 2.3.1, we follow the ODD (Overview, Design Concepts, Details) protocol that has been widely used to describe simulation models in multiple disciplines [32,33].
- For the estimation of the grazing capacity of the island’s ecosystems (Section 2.3.2), we used net primary production (NPP) data derived from Fetzel et al. [24], and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from Löw [27].
2.3.1. Calculation of Metabolic Requirements of Small Ruminants Based on GLEAM
2.3.2. Estimation of the Grazing Capacity of Local Ecosystems
2.4. Social and Monetary Assessment of the Local Small Ruminant Farming System
2.5. Validation and Uncertainty of the Utilized Model and Data
3. Results
3.1. Development of the Total Livestock Units on Samothrace 1929–2016
3.2. The Metabolism of the Small Ruminant Population of Samothrace 1993–2016
3.3. Utilization of Grazing Resources by the Small Ruminant Population
3.4. The (Under-)Utilization of Production Potentials
3.5. The Monetary Economy of the Small Ruminant Farming System in 2016
4. Discussion
4.1. The Sustainability Crisis of the Small Ruminant Farming System on Samothrace
4.2. The Regression of Sedentary Extensive Small Ruminant Farming Systems
4.3. The European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a Socio-Economic Driver for Changes Affecting the Small Ruminant Farming System on Samothrace
4.4. The Future of Small Ruminant Farming in the Mediterranean
5. Conclusions
Supplementary Materials
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Overview and Design Concepts of the Utilized Modelling Approach | ||
---|---|---|
Overview | purpose | Assess feed requirements of the local SRFS, based on population dynamics and the potential output of livestock products in regard to the availability of feeding resources on the island |
materials | Grazed biomass and locally produced and imported feed in tons per year | |
processes | Population dynamics and energy requirements of sheep and goats, translated into biomass consumption | |
spatial and temporal scale | The island of Samothrace from 1993 to 2016 | |
system overview | Provided in GLEAM model description (see Supplementary Information: Figure S5) | |
Design Concepts | basic principles | Retrospective, dynamic and bottom-up or stock driven material flow analysis (MFA) |
modelling approaches | Dynamic modelling approach based on the Global Livestock Environment Assessment Model (GLEAM) [31] | |
dissipation | Not explicitly modelled | |
spatial dimension | A spatially explicit assessment was not conducted | |
uncertainty | Systematic uncertainty assessment of all model input parameters based on the framework by Laner et al. [28], as well as systematic sensitivity testing |
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Noll, D.; Lauk, C.; Gaube, V.; Wiedenhofer, D. Caught in a Deadlock: Small Ruminant Farming on the Greek Island of Samothrace. The Importance of Regional Contexts for Effective EU Agricultural Policies. Sustainability 2020, 12, 762. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030762
Noll D, Lauk C, Gaube V, Wiedenhofer D. Caught in a Deadlock: Small Ruminant Farming on the Greek Island of Samothrace. The Importance of Regional Contexts for Effective EU Agricultural Policies. Sustainability. 2020; 12(3):762. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030762
Chicago/Turabian StyleNoll, Dominik, Christian Lauk, Veronika Gaube, and Dominik Wiedenhofer. 2020. "Caught in a Deadlock: Small Ruminant Farming on the Greek Island of Samothrace. The Importance of Regional Contexts for Effective EU Agricultural Policies" Sustainability 12, no. 3: 762. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030762
APA StyleNoll, D., Lauk, C., Gaube, V., & Wiedenhofer, D. (2020). Caught in a Deadlock: Small Ruminant Farming on the Greek Island of Samothrace. The Importance of Regional Contexts for Effective EU Agricultural Policies. Sustainability, 12(3), 762. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12030762