A Study on Amount and Importance of Ecosystem Services from Bulgarian Agriculture

Abstract

Despite its scientific and practical importance the studies on ammount and importance of ecosystem servives from Bulgarian agriculture are at the beginning stage. This presents initial results of a large scale studies on the structure and imporance of agroecosystm services in Bulgaria. The identification of the type, size, efficiency and importance of “produced” services of agro-systems is based on the assessments of the managers of 324 “typical” farms of different legal status, size, production specialization, ecological and geographical location. The study has found out that there are significant differences in the participation and contribution of agricultural holdings in the protection and provision of agro-ecosystem services in the variouse specific and principled ecosystems of the country, and major subsectors of agricultural production. The later requires special measures to improve, diversify and intensify this activity of farmers through training, information, exchange of experience, public incentives and support, etc. Analyzes of the structure and importance of agro-ecosystem services in the country are to be expanded by improving the accuracy and representativeness of the information by increasing the number of surveyed farms,  avoiding “douple” accounting, applying statistical methods to verify reliability, special "training" of and those involved in surveys, applying direct field measurmentsa experts and stakeholders involvments etc.