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标题：Livestock Subsidies and Rangeland Degradation in Central Crete
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作者：Hugues Lorent ; Ruth Sonnenschein ; Georgios M. Tsiourlis 等
期刊名称：Ecology and Society
印刷版ISSN：1708-3087
电子版ISSN：1708-3087
出版年度：2009
卷号：14
期号：2
出版社：The Resilience Alliance
摘要：Marginal and unstable environmental conditions force stockbreeders in drylands to developadaptive strategies to ensure stability of production. In intensive market-oriented pastoral systems, thepartial substitution of rangeland forage production by external feed increases the influence of commodityprices in stockbreeders' decisions, which become increasingly decoupled from environmental constraints.In Mediterranean countries of the European Union (EU), Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidiesalso influence agricultural practices, potentially increasing environmental impacts. By modeling subsidyallocation to sheep and goat breeders in Crete, we showed that livestock subsidies for Less Favoured Areas(LFA) stimulated flock growth up to a point. By linking interviews of farmers to remote-sensing data infour village communities in central Crete, we tested statistically alternative hypotheses explaining the linksbetween CAP subsidies, livestock-husbandry practices, and land degradation at the farm level. The flockgrowth stimulated by livestock subsidies was accompanied by the intensification of herd management, anddecreasing yields and profits, with no statistical association to vegetation degradation. Farms with largerflocks became more sensitive to market fluctuations
关键词：Common Agricultural Policy; Crete; desertification; sheep and goats; subsidies; vegetation-;cover trend