| Rural Development Programmes (RDP) of the member states are an established component of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union (EU). One of the objectives of the RDP is the "Improvement of the environment and the countryside", which includes agri-environmental measures (AEM), crucial activities towards the integration of the environmental aspect into the CAP. AEM encourage farmers to make an environmental commitment aiming at preserving the environment and maintaining the countryside, for which they are financially compensated (EC, 2005).;The objective of this dissertation was to assess the agri-environmental measures with the help of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and its supporting software Expert Choice, showing at the same time how this most used multicriteria decision method (MCDM) can also be used for agricultural problems. For this dissertation, three criteria and their attributes were identified and arranged hierarchically. With the help of questionnaires, experts made pairwise comparisons of the elements and the judgement on the contribution of the measures towards achieving the sub-goals.;The intention of the assessment of agri-environmental measures was to get their precise ranking, which could be a basis for further discussions about which of the AEM are considered most effective and feasible. The results show that organic and integrated agricultural production make the greatest contribution to establishing sustainable agriculture and secure income for the farmers. They also show that activities for landscape management, maintenance and conservation are possible ways of creating employment in rural areas. |
