Research

The project collects data on the economic situation of large forests in Austria (forestry operations >500 hectares) during the specified period and presents the current developments in this area. To this end, operating accounts are prepared, as well as individual and inter-company evaluations (such as standardized mean value calculations (nominal and real) and panel calculations for the overall mean and the total of 9 groups for the final evaluation, as well as the preparation of individual cost and income statements (benchmark comparison) and “hit lists” for approx. 100 forestry reporting companies. The aggregated key figures are important empirical data bases for forestry policy makers as well as for forestry economic research and teaching at BOKU University and are included, among other things, in the annual forest report of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management.

This project examines central aspects of insurance premium subsidies within the framework of the Hail Insurance Promotion Act. The planned approach is divided into a theoretical analysis of scientific literature (WP1) and two subsequent empirical analyses. First, in a theoretical literature analysis an overview of the design of similar funding systems in an international context is given and based on this, possible improvement potentials for the Austrian system are identified. Second, based on the theoretical literature analysis, a first empirical analysis identifies key drivers of the development of costs and demand in relation to the insurance premium support. Third, a second empirical analysis shows the individual farm-level effects of subsidized insurance in the current system. Through these 3 outputs, the project intends to also identify improvement potentials in terms of data requirements for effective monitoring. The results of the planned research project therefore represent a well-founded information basis that political decision-makers can use for the further development of the Austrian system of insurance premium support in agriculture.

VALOR will establish a world leading system to evaluate and explore the impacts of pollinators on local societies and economies. The project team will take a full systems based approach and world leading research methods to explore the local landscape, farm business, societal, policy, nutrition and value chain dependences on pollinators in six case study regions. VALOR embeds policy, practice and business in its core research focus, working directly with stakeholders to develop believable scenarios and accessible tools that will not only facilitate the incorporation of pollinators into decision making at multiple scales, but will allow future efforts by research and private sector actors to easily replicate our approach. Our outcomes will be disseminated through European partners and hosted on our existing knowledge hubs, ensuring impact beyond the end of the project. The Horizon Europe project VALOR is led by the University of Reading, the Institute of Agricultural and Forest Economics leads WP 4 ‘Local scale economic and social dependences’.