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Abstract
This paper develops a thorough yet easily implementable approach to measuring agriculture’s contribution
to rural viability. The approach is based on input-output modelling. It adopts a number of concepts
from input-output modelling such as determining the explicit geographical origin of input requirements
and the geographical destination of farm household expenditures without formerly developing
an input-output table.
The approach is applied to four case studies in the Swiss mountain regions and tested for three scenarios.
Our results clarify the role that agriculture still plays in the context of rural viability. They
demonstrate that agriculture’s contribution to rural viability differs considerably between the case
study regions and that future developments lead to a marked decline in this contribution. Rural development
strategies have to take these specific regional characteristics and development perspectives
into account.
Keywords: This paper develops a thorough yet easily implementable approach to measuring agriculture’s contribution
to rural viability. The approach is based on input-output modelling. It adopts a number of concepts
from input-output modelling such as determining the explicit geographical origin of input requirements
and the geographical destination of farm household expenditures without formerly developing
an input-output table.
The approach is applied to four case studies in the Swiss mountain regions and tested for three scenarios.
Our results clarify the role that agriculture still plays in the context of rural viability. They
demonstrate that agriculture’s contribution to rural viability differs considerably between the case
study regions and that future developments lead to a marked decline in this contribution. Rural development
strategies have to take these specific regional characteristics and development perspectives
into account.