Economic valuation of grassland utilization improvement in the Western Balkans

Abstract

Grassland is land permanently overgrown with grasses that can be used for grazing or preparing fodder. When identifying and delineating grassland areas from other agricultural areas, criteria can be their purpose (land cover) or their use (land use). The processes of depopulation and deagrarization of rural areas increase the surfaces of unutilized grasslands and decrease of their use for agricultural purpose. The purpose of research presented in this paper is the analysis of transformation of grassland area in six Western Balkans countries/territories from covered to used status. During the research, the methods of quantitative modelling and simulation were combined. Starting from existing grassland areas (which are equalized with permanent meadows and pastures), the intensity of their use was determined by calculating the grazing livestock density (GLD) index. Generally, grasslands are used extensively for feeding ruminants in the WB region, and great part of the area is not used at all, so the average GLD index is 0.88 with significant variations between countries. Three countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and North Macedonia) have a GLD of 0.5 or less and there is space for them to increasing the number of ruminants up to 1.1 million livestock standard units (LSU) and increasing livestock density up to one LSU per ha of grassland. The conclusion is that, depending on the scenario, i.e. the structure of ruminant stock (cattle, sheep and goats), the value of livestock production in the Western Balkans could increase from 498 to 655 million EUR, still without environmental pressure of grazing on grassland area.

Keywords

• grasslands
• ruminants
• grazing livestock density
• bosnia
• herzegovina