The Value of Ecosystem Services from Swedish Cattle Production

Abstract

Ecosystem services (ES) are the goods and services the nature provides to society. The quantification and valuation of ES are a necessary step to fully understand the importance of different ecosystems. The Swedish cattle production stands for 40% of the agricultural land use and provides Sweden with around 2.9 million ton milk and 0.1 million ton beef each year. This thesis examines the effects of land uses associated to the Swedish cattle production on ecosystem services. As a result, the monetary value of the total cattle production in Sweden are 27 - 37 billion SEK/year where physical and experiental interactions have the largest value (29 - 32 %) closely followed by milk (26 - 36 %). The provisioning services contributes to a share of the total maximum value of 39 - 53 %, the regulating and maintenance services have a share of 1 - 10% and the cultural services have a share of 46 - 51 %. The total value of the non-market services; regulating and maintenance- and cultural services, for land uses associated to the cattle production are 13 - 22 billion SEK/year. The non-market value for the alternative land uses cropland and forest are 1 - 4 billion SEK/year and 2 - 21 billion SEK/year respectively. These values could be used as guidelines for policies and compensation programs to prevent a decrease of cattle associated land use areas.