Actors’ trade-off preferences matter : an illustrative case based on Swiss agricultural policy for the future of livestock production

Agri-food systems (AFS) are multi-functional. This results in unavoidable trade-offs when wanting to transform the systems towards more sustainability. For instance, an increase in biodiversity in pastures comes at the cost of decreased hourly wage for the farmer (Binder et al., 2012). Addressing trade-offs, also considering the social dimension, could unlock AFS transformation. Trade-off analysis in agriculture claims to be “central to policy and decision-making aimed at promoting sustainable agricultural landscapes.” (Breure et al., 2024, p.211) However, these authors also mention that trade-off analysis falls short in engaging with stakeholders. In our work, we implement and test a method from Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to elicit the weight preferences. Weights are scaling constants representing how individuals assign relative importance to the different functions of the AFS of interest, i.e. weights indicate how individuals would like to address the trade-offs. We report on an application case concerning the future of livestock production in Switzerland. Trade-offs are linked to specific Swiss policy objectives, including environmental protection, socio-economic well-being and food security. Representatives of different interest organizations in the Swiss food system are interviewed and confronted with potential livestock scenarios. In this presentation, we report on the method used and the trade-off preferences collected. We discuss implications for future policy directions.