DETERMINATION OF INPUT AND OUTPUT COEFFICIENTS OF CROPPING SYSTEMS INTHE EUROPEAN-COMMUNITY

The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) has exp lored possible future developments in rural land use within the Europe an Community (EC) to support strategic policy making. Multiple goal li near programming (MGLP) was applied to evaluate different scenarios ba sed on alternative policy views. For the MGLP-model, WRR needed inform ation on agricultural production systems, specifically quantification of inputs like nutrients, water, pesticides, labour and machinery, and outputs like crop yields and environmental pollution. In this paper, the determination of inputs and outputs is described for a number of p re-defined cropping systems at regional level, using results of a land evaluation study for the EC. All cropping systems defined are based o n the assumption that the best available production techniques are bei ng used, taking into account that the explorations aim at possible agr icultural developments in the next 25 years.