Assessing the European Water Stewardship Standard in the Context ...

4 Methodology 17
4.2.1 Selection of Pilot Farms
Over the course of pilot testing the EWS standard was applied in all European regions. In this
study Germany was chosen as a representative country for Central Europe. To keep the frame
of a diploma thesis five farms were selected. To inquire into general conditions for one group
of users, the cases were situated in the same region having similar farm profiles. This
complied with the idea to examine a number of similar cases jointly in order to provoke better
understanding and theorisation (STAKE 1995). Farms were selected according the following
criteria:
(i) Farmers who suffer from water stress. A higher sensitivity towards water and
therefore a higher interest in the EWS standard was assumed.
(ii) Farmers participating in certification systems, since this enables them to provide
adequate feedback towards the EWS standard as a certification scheme.
(iii) Farmers situated in the same river basin.
Farmers were contacted via a research project investigating the sustainability of different land
management systems called “Klimawirkungen und Nachhaltigkeit von Landbausystemen”
(Climate effects and sustainability of agricultural production systems). The names of the
farms were made anonymous to assure confidentiality and are referred to as farmer and farm:
A, B, C, D and E.
% Available Water Capacity (AWC)
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Humidity of soil layers 0-60cm
01.Jan.
15.Jan.
29.Jan.
12.Feb.
26.Feb.
12.Mar.
26.Mar.
09.Apr.
23.Apr.
07.May
21.May
04.Jun.
18.Jun.
02.Jul.
16.Jul.
30.Jul.
13.Aug.
27.Aug.
10.Sept.
24.Sep.
08.Oct.
22.Oct.
05.Nov.
19.Nov.
03.Dec.
17.Dec.
31.Dec.
% AWC 0-60cm
Figure 1: To exemplify early summer droughts, soil humidity measurements on Farm D
in 2010 (Source: NPa 2011)