Sensory Experiences and Expectations of Organic Food. Results of Focus Group Discussions

This executive summary describes the main objectives and findings from a qualitative survey on consumers’ sensory experiences, expectations and preferences with respect to organic food. The survey was conducted in the frame of the European Commission funded project ECROPOLIS in 2009 in Germany (DE), France (FR), Italy (IT), Netherlands (NL), Poland (PL) and Switzerland (CH). The objectives of this research were to explore: - the range of experiences, expectations and preferences for specific sensory properties of organic food. - words that are used by consumers to differentiate the taste of organic products amongst themselves and compared to conventional ones. - symbolic’ meanings and images which participants relate to sensory characteristics of organic food. - consumers’ sensory expectations and preferences related to the variability and standardisation of organic food. - consumers’ experiences to marketing of sensory characteristics of organic food. - possible differences in consumers’ sensory expectations and preferences between the participating countries

Beschäftigung von Menschen mit Behinderung in der Landwirtschaft – die Rolle der Vernetzung mit „Grünen“ Werkstätten für behinderte Menschen

The cooperation and link of “Workshops for Adapted Work” with actors from a respective region is an important issue in socio and regional politics because it can improve the inclusion of employees with disabilities and can create new possibilities of composite farm income. Our research investigates the prospects and conditions of such cooperation in a case study approach with four Workshops within Germany. In this survey we applied qualitative and quantitative methods of social sciences and investigated different stakeholders: disabled people (employees), farmers / entrepreneurs as (potential) employers and managers of such Workshops as experts. The data analysis includes descriptive statistics, content analysis and the Delphi method. The results will be published in a manual for Workshops and shall foster innovations in rural development and social services

The Role of Self-Control in Self-Tracking

Self-tracking is defined as using technology to monitor one’s own behaviour e.g. sleeping habits or steps. Using established measurements from psychology we investigate how different levels of self-control influence the tracking behaviour of consumers and their expenditures for self-tracking software and hardware. Furthermore, we analyse what motivations to start self-tracking drive different self-tracking activities. To this end we conducted a web-based survey with 130 participants and evaluated our data using PLS-SEM analysis. We find that higher levels of self-control increase the odds of consumers tracking physical parameters and spending more for self-tracking software and hardware. Furthermore, higher impulsivity has a negative effect on the likelihood of tracking medical parameters. Tracking behaviour in general is driven by curiosity. Overall expenditures depend on the usage frequency of self-tracking tools. We conclude that users with low self-control value self-tracking to a lower degree because they are confronted with negative self-tracking results and emotions

Sichtweisen und Problemwahrnehmungen von Landwirten, Forschern und Naturschützern im Projekt „Die Integration von Naturschutzzielen in den Ökologischen Landbau – am Beispiel der Hessischen Staatsdomäne Frankenhausen“

The results of interviews with different stakeholders within a nature protection project on an experimental farm are presented. A special focus lies upon the different atti-tudes, perceptions and viewpoints concerning the acceptance of the project and its aims. The results of the qualitative interviews reveal that there is a special need to support and to integrate the group of the farmers so that they will take over the aims and measures after the project has ended

Fallstudie über die partizipative Zusammenarbeit von Landwirten und Wissenschaftlern in einem Naturschutzprojekt – am Beispiel der Hessischen Staatsdomäne Frankenhausen

The project “The integration of nature conservation into organic farming” tries to integrate goals of nature conservation and landscape development using a participatory process. A case study about the cooperation process between scientists and farmers on an experimental farm is presented. The empirical results of qualitative interviews identify attitudes and factors for risks and success of this process that determine whether a participatory approach can be an effective method for the development or the integration of nature protection strategies into organic farming

Ganzheitliche Nachhaltigkeitsanalyse landwirtschaftlicher Betriebe – erste Erfahrungen mit dem SMART-Farm Tool in Luxemburg

In einer Fallstudie wurden 12 luxemburgische landwirtschaftliche Betriebe mit dem SMART-Fam Tool analysiert um erste Erfahrungen mit dem in der Schweiz entwickelten SMART–Farm Tool zu gewinnen. Dabei sollte die Übertragbarkeit des Tools auf den LU Kontext getestet werden

Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung von Landwirtschaftsbetrieben nach den SAFA-Leitlinien

To promote a common concept of sustainability assessment, the FAO published guidelines for the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture Systems (SAFA). The aim of this paper is to present and discuss a method, which operationalises the SAFA-Guidelines at farm level, based on the concept of Multi-Criteria Analysis. The assessment method determines the degree of goal achievement of the 58 SAFA subthemes using a set of over 300 indicators, which is adapted according to farm type and region. It is therefore globally applicable, able to identify differences in different areas of sustainability between farms and can complement existing methods such as LCA

Repräsentative SMART-Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung der Bio Suisse-Betriebe. Kurzbericht 2018

Die Knospe gilt als Garant für eine nachhaltige Landwirtschaft. Doch wie nachhaltig wirtschaften die Knospe-Höfe tatsächlich,was läuft gut, wo gibt es Verbesserungspotential? Diesen Fragen gingen das FiBL und die SFS im Auftrag von Bio Suisse auf den Grund. Zum Einsatz kam dabei SMART (Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment RouTine), ein Instrument, welches das FiBL zur ganzheitlichen Nachhaltigkeitsanalyse und Bewertung von landwirtschaftlichen Betrieben und Lebensmittelunternehmen entwickelt hat. Die Bewertung beruht auf einer Betriebsbesichtigung und einem etwa zwei- bis dreistündigen Interview mit den Betriebsleitern zu verschiedenen für die Landwirtschaft relevanten Themenbereichen. Innerhalb von drei Jahren wurden so 185 Höfe auf ihre Nachhaltigkeit hin untersucht. Die Stichprobe wurde so gewählt, dass alle Betriebstypen und Landwirtschaftszonen abgebildet wurden. Zu den Projektzielen gehörten: - Repräsentative Bewertung der Nachhaltigkeitsleistungen der Knospe-Betriebe durch eine externe Institution. - Ermöglichung der kontinuierlichen Entwicklung der Betriebe und Sicherstellung der Zukunftsfähigkeit der Bio Suisse Betriebe sowie der Marke Knospe. - Erarbeitung einer glaubwürdigen Informationsbasis zur Kommunikation der Nachhaltigkeit von Knospe-Betrieben. Die Ergebnisse sollen sowohl für die Verbesserung des Beratungs- und Schulungsangebots im Bereich Nachhaltigkeit als auch für die strategische Weiterentwicklung des Verbands genutzt werden

Creativity Loading – Please Wait! Investigating the Relationship between Interruption, Mind Wandering and Creativity

With the advancement of information technologies, routine tasks are increasingly supported by information systems, which is why ideation and creativity is becoming more and more important. We know from many anecdotes that creative ideas emerge when our mind is wandering instead of being focused on the task at hand. Yet, most information systems that are used for work-related purposes offer only little opportunities for task-unrelated thoughts. In contrast, current literature shows that most information technology is designed to keep our attention. In order to better understand the value of mind wandering, we propose an experimental design that incorporates interruptions that vary in their length with the objective to stimulate episodes of mind wandering and thus positively impact creativity. We provide initial insights on how the experiment should designed and discuss implications for future research

Further Development of Methodologies for Sustainability Assessment and Monitoring in Organic/Ecological Agriculture

In recent years there has been a great deal of interest in assessing the sustainability of agriculture in terms of its social, environmental and economic impact and a number of indicators and tools are used. Measurements take place at the farm or product level and indicators can be outcome related e.g. number of butterfly species present, or management related e.g. percentage of fields with margins growing wildflowers to attract butterflies. Given its underlying ethos, the organic/ecological agriculture sector should aim to be at the forefront of sustainability. The development of assessment approaches and recent discussions within the movement have identified continuous improvement towards best practice in sustainability to be one of the important features of the new direction. Positive effects in such areas as ‘environment’ are seen as one of the most important reasons for the financial support given to the organic sector, and as one of the reasons for consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for organic food. This project aimed to provide practical recommendations on the suitability of the available sustainability assessment frameworks, themes, tools and indicators for the organic sector and to help consider and further develop sustainability assessment approaches. A review of tools, indicators, themes and sustainability assessment methods was carried out. The opinions of organisations and individuals from within the organic sector were obtained through an international workshop and an online survey. Synergies and trade-offs between indicators were investigated using the database of FiBL’s SMART sustainability assessment tool to investigate the relationships between themes. Results from the project have illustrated that choosing the most promising indicators for the organic sector needs to be driven by the importance of the sustainability theme as well as using a suitable method. Choosing indicators solely on the basis of desirable goals may lead to a subjective and non-transparent indicator selection which cannot be externally verified. On the other hand, assessing the quality of indicators alone appears to be too much driven by method and the choice of tools will also need to be influenced by data availability and/or cost of data collection. The inclusion of indicators that assess areas within social sustainability and good governance (e.g. corporate social responsibility) should be encouraged within existing tools. This development should build on recent frameworks provided by, for instance the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations FAO and OECD (e.g. SAFA, guidelines on social LCA, DFID Sustainable Livelihoods Framework). Indicator development should also consider stakeholder views and perspectives (perhaps using, for example, the European Innovation Partnership Programme to contact stakeholders) and decide on threshold values that indicate poor, acceptable and good performance. The assessment of synergies and trade-offs has illustrated that farms with good performance with regards to governance are likely to have positive performance on most environmental, social and economic aspects. This highlights the importance of good corporate management at the farm level. Further work on synergies and trade-offs using samples of farms is urgently required. In addition, trade-offs between the economic dimension on the one hand and the environmental and social dimensions on the other hand, may need to be accepted at farm level. There is scope, however, for these to be addressed by policy makers, to help the farmers set the right priorities. Substantial trade-offs also exist within the environmental dimension (for example between greenhouse gas emissions and animal welfare) which might be more difficult to resolve. Priorities need to be set depending on the specific context of the farm. Areas of sustainability that are perceived by those within the organic sector as being potential strengths were identified. These could be harnessed in terms of communicating the benefits of organic production. These key strengths include biodiversity, ecosystem diversity, soil quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Although such key strengths may seem obvious to those working within the sector and for several there is some good scientific evidence available, it is likely that the benefits are not widely-known or publicised and that further development of the evidence base is required