A recent study at the ETH Zurich shows that the development of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Switzerland will, also in the near future, mainly depend oil the development of livestock populations. Current GHG reduction measures may only play a marginal role, given their relatively high cost. Furthermore, the results indicate that the target of reducing agricultural GHGs by 20% below the 1990 level could be achieved with a GHG charge of 50 CHF/t CO(2)eq only if at the same time the agricultural price level would be lowered. Yet, this would entail substantial income losses for the farmers.

The assessment of the future development of Swiss agricultural market prices and input costs serves as a basis for generating scenarios. However, often comparability between studies is difficult due to a lack of details about the assumptions. The Institute for Agricultural Economics has developed a database PreDaBa to generate scenarios based on comparable assumptions. The Basisszenario IAW constitutes a starting point to create scenarios adapted to user's needs by modifying the assumptions.