The State Agency for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Areas in Schleswig-Holstein (LLUR) is a partner in many of Baltic Compass Work packages. LLURs input to Baltic Compass project is provision of environmental information by modern technologies as well as supporting indicator development and modeling scenarios. But what is currently going on in Schleswig-Holstein?

Baltic COMPASS is currently involved in data acquisition by means of the Criteria System for Sustainable Agriculture (CSSA) in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.  CSSA has been developed by the TLL Jena (Thuringian State Institute for Agriculture) for the realisation of a sustainability analysis on farm level. With a total of 34 indicators, CSSA describes the farm`s situation in the fields of economy, ecology and social issues.

The Criteria System for Sustainable Agriculture includes 34 indicators in the fields of economy, ecology and social issues

The set of ecological indicators is used since 1994, further development and improvements with the help of experts has been made up to today. The indicators concerning economy and social issues have been joined to CSSA in 2000, so the complete system has now been in use for more than 10 years.

Within BalticCOMPASS, four farms in the pilot region of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, are participating in CSSA. The pilot region is situated within the two districts Ostholstein and Plön. The farmer gets information about his farm`s situation in the form of reports, graphics and tables. With these results the farmer is e. g. able to recognize and remedy weak points and to defend himself against general reproaches.

Besides the advantages for the farmer, one research goal is to get a more detailed view of functionality and dependencies in the region by using the data on farm level- of course anonymously and with permission of the participating farmers.