Ecosystem services of Bulgarian agriculture

Agricultural ecosystems of different types and their specific “agro-ecosystem” services are among the most widespread in the world. However, in Bulgaria the state of practical progression of the studies of agricultural services in mostly at the methodological level and very limited to general classification and qualitative “assessments”. This article tries to fill the gap and present initial results of large scale studies on the structure and importance of agroecosystem 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 various specific and principled ecosystems of the country, and major subsectors of agricultural production. The latter 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 “double” accounting, applying statistical methods to verify the reliability, special "training" of and those involved in surveys, applying direct field measurements experts and stakeholders involvement etc.