This project investigates how well farm management information systems (FMIS) used on the Swiss Future Farm as well as the data and indicators from the other ‘Indicate’ projects lend themselves to agri-environmental monitoring.
Background
On behalf of the Federal Office for Agriculture (FOAG), Agroscope performs an agri-environmental monitoring (AEM) service based on the Ordinance concerning the Evaluation of the Sustainability of Agriculture (SR 919.118). The primary aim of this agricultural environmental monitoring is to represent how the environmental impact of agriculture changes over time. For farm-specific statements, we rely on the Swiss Agri-Environmental Data Network (SAEDN), which collects detailed data from around 300 farms on stock and practice (e.g. animal herds, fertilisation practice) from which it calculates agri-environmental indicators.
Because the SAEDN will be collecting farm data for the last time in 2022, a further development project was initiated in mid-2020 to develop a new farm agri-environmental monitoring project. This new monitoring project will rely primarily on already existing data, enabling the number of collections made by farms to be reduced. The data available through FMIS offers great potential if more farms use FMIS in future.
Purpose
The project investigates how easily the current agri-environmental indicators of the SAEDN can be calculated with the aid of the FMIS used on the Swiss Future Farm, thereby sounding out the potential of FMIS and new types of individual-farm data for use in agri-environmental monitoring. In addition to aspects of data flow, aspects of data quality and data protection will be highlighted here. We will also be examining the extent to which the indicators generated by the other ‘Indicate’ projects can be used in agri-environmental monitoring.
Original Title
Development and Knowledge Transfer of Environmental Indicators with the Help of FMIS
