Indicators in the study sites

Table of Contents

1. Compilers and contributors
2. Introduction
3. Climate indicators
4. Water indicators
5. Soil indicators
6. Vegetation indicators
7. Water runoff indicators
8. Forest fires indicators
9. Agriculture indicators
   1. Farm ownership
   2. Farm size
   3. Land fragmentation
   4. Net farm income
   5. Parallel employment
10. Cultivation indicators
11. Animal husbandry indicators
12. Land management indicators
13. Land use indicators
14. Water use indicators
15. Tourism indicators
16. Human characteristics indicators
17. Institutional indicators
18. Conclusions
19. References

Net farm income

The farm income plays a very important role in defining the strategies of the farmers with respect to the land management. If the farmers get sufficient income from the farm, they will adopt all possible strategies to preserve the soils and the environment. Farmers in Mediterranean Europe face severe problems due to international competition with the price of their products to be low compared to previous decades. As a result of the low income, land investment including soil erosion or soil salinization protection measures is limited. Many of the traditional cultivation practices such as terraced areas around the Mediterranean have been abandoned especially those cultivated with cereals and in some cases with olives and vines due to declined of farm income. Abandonment of such areas results in terraces collapse with soil to be washed out immediately by surface water runoff, leading to land desertification.

The Net Farm Income has been defined as: NFI = Total Output (A) - All Inputs (B) + net public receipts (subsidies less farm taxes). Data on farm income for this project have been collected in collaboration with the land user the following classes have been defined: (a) low, range: <Local Mean-St. Dev.; (b) moderate, range: > Local Mean - St. Dev. < Local Mean, (c) high, range: > Local Mean < Local Mean + St. Dev.; and (d) very high, range: > Local Mean + St. Dev.

As Table 7 shows, data on net farm income have been collected in 1000 study fields, corresponding to 14 study sites. The dominant class of net farm income was moderate, covering 64.3% of the study field sites (Fig. 54). Such net farm income has been found in the study sites of Secano Interior-Chile, Boteti Area-Botswana, Gois-Portugal, and Konya Karapinar plain-Turkey, Santiago Island-Cape Verde, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Zeuss Koutine-Tunisia, Guadalentin Basin Murcia-Spain, Novij Saratov-Russia, Djanybek-Russia, Cointzio Catchment-Mexico, and Crete-Greece. The following important class of net farm income was low, covering 29.7% of the study field sites, and corresponding to the study sites of Secano Interior-Chile, Santiago Island-Cape Verde, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Zeuss Koutine-Tunisia, Cointzio Catchment-Mexico, Gois-Portugal, and Mação- Portugal. High and very high farm income has been identified in few cases (4.6%, and 1.3% of the study fields sites), corresponding to few cases of the study sites Boteti Area-Botswana, Mamora Sehoul-Morocco, Gois-Portugal, Novij Saratov-Russia, and Djanybek-Russia. In conclusion the majority of the farmers in which the study fields belongs have moderate to low farm income and measures for environmental protection against land desertification is expected to be limited.

Fig. 54. Distribution of net farm income classes defined in the study field sites