In this brochure seven farmers are explaining how they protect our environment with their agriculture and preserve it for future generations. The Austrian farmers have already been working for centuries with the natural bases of life water, soil, air and biodiversity. By means of their near-natural management they have succeeded in creating a cultivated landscape which is renowned for its diversity and its beauty far beyond the borders of our country. This entails great challenges for the farmers. Small farm areas, often located on steep slopes, are hard to be managed, the renunciation of the use of yield increasing inputs, such as for example artificial fertilisers saves the environment but means at the same time lower yields for the farms. The Austrian Agri-environmental Programme ÖPUL supports the farmers, in order to ensure that they can produce healthy domestic foodstuffs and preserve at the same time our natural bases of life and tend our landscape. By means of the Agri-environmental Programme additional services resulting from the additional work in favour of the environment and of the cultivated landscape as well as income losses are compensated for. Read on the next pages about all the things our farmers are doing in favour of our environment – and why they are doing all that.