A novel management-based system of payments for ecosystem services for targeted agri-environmental policy

Agricultural policy should recognize the farmers' role in delivering ecosystem services (ES) to society, for which both farmers and policy makers need improved tools to set objective environmental targets and fair distribution of subsidies. We aimed to quantify the effect of beneficial agricultural practices on ES delivery, and to develop and apply a generic framework of management-based payments for ES (PES). We carried out a Delphi expert consultation (researchers and technicians/managers) on the interface agriculture-environment by which we measured the contribution of current agricultural practices at farm level to relevant ES in Mediterranean agroecosystems. Next, we designed a novel framework of PES that used these contributions to rank the practices that satisfied three agri-environmental policy objectives (equal importance of ES, focus on biodiversity and climate, and focus on social demands). We found that the relative contribution of practices to individual ES delivery was rather similar, especially for those ES influenced by many agricultural practices. However, when considering different objectives in the PES framework, differences in practice prioritization were apparent. The framework was able to reward farmers according to their objective contribution to conservation priorities. The PES system also showed that grazing management practices were multifunctional and delivered ES in bundles.