Published in Scientific Papers. Series "Management, Economic Engineering in Agriculture and rural development", Vol. 16 ISSUE 3
Written by Vida DABKIENĖ

The paper aimed to measure the biodiversity of Lithuanian family farms using readily available FADN data. The research draws on a sample of 1304 family farms. Farms diversity is expressed by diversity in land use and cropping based on Shannon’s equitability and Simpson’s diversity indices. The effects of farms’ management to biodiversity between farms in terms of specialization, economic size, farming intensity and land area are examined. The biodiversity indices ranged from 0 to 1 (scaled into three intervals), assuming that the closer to 1 were the values of the index the higher was biodiversity of the farm. Lithuanian case analysis suggested that certain measures for strengthening farms biodiversity were necessary as the average values of the biodiversity based on Shannon’s equitability (land use and cropping) and Simpson’s diversity (land use and cropping) indices fell within the medium biodiversity interval. Lower diversity values of Simpson’s diversity in comparison to Shannon’s indices values were obtained across analysed farming types and farm classes. This is likely related to Simpson’s index sensitivity to the number of land use and cropping elements of farms. Though, the Shannon’s equitability index has greater importance to rarer land use or cropping elements. Therefore, for policy purposes both indicators provide valuable insights to enhance and maintain the biodiversity on farms.

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