Uptake of Ecological Farming Practices by EU Farms: A Pan‐European Typology

Understanding and measuring the sustainability of farms is key to evaluating progress towards policy goals for a more sustainable agriculture. In the LIFT project, a farm typology was developed to classify farms according to their ecological performance, based on farm-level variables from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN). Selected variables are used to assess three key ecological dimensions of farming: total input intensity; degree of circularity (reliance on own-produced versus external inputs); and avoidance of the use of specific inputs of concern for the environment and consumers. The combination of these aspects is considered as a measure of the farm proximity to a full agroecological approach. The typology allows comparison of farms across farm types, countries and years. We briefly present the method and discuss two key aspects: 1) how the proposed farm typology can inform policymaking in the context of a new EU policy framework; 2) how it can inform the foreseen transformation of the FADN into a Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN). We suggest that the use of a typology approach under the new FSDN provides useful information on the impacts of the implementation of agroecological practices with an acceptable additional effort in terms of data collection.</p

Creating Conditions for Harnessing the Potential of Transitions to Agroecology in Europe and Requirements for Policy

Food systems require reorientation to take greater account of interactions with the environment, economy, health and society. Transitions to agroecological farming practices and systems can connect policy areas and realise environmental, economic and social aims. These transitions provide a lens for reviewing policy, practice and behaviours of actors in farming systems and value chains, identification of barriers to uptake, and policy areas to which they contribute or where there are gaps. Developing social and human capital, and governance structures that enable transitions to agroecology are key to their prospects of success. Education and life-long learning are key to developing the knowledge and skills of younger generations of land managers and other actors in value chains, throughout their careers. The outcome sought is for a shared understanding of the benefits of agroecological practices and systems, creating opportunities to rebalance policies towards delivering climate neutrality, reversing biodiversity loss, and enhancing rights of citizens. To realise those opportunities policies and strategies should be coherent across territorial and systems levels, and tailored to place, system, people, and stages of transitions. Overall, they should be designed to ensure all citizens are beneficiaries of transitions to agroecological farming systems, over the long term, and that no-one or place is disadvantaged by the processes of change or the outcome intended.</p

Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level

This deliverable investigates the socio-economic effects of ecological approaches to farming through implementing two participatory approaches, namely Delphi exercise and Q-method, at the level of a case study area (CSA). The focus is on how people and other productive assets are employed and remunerated by ecological approaches to agriculture, particularly those aspects that can influence employment, and drive the prosperity and vitality of local communities and some rural businesses. It is based on the collaborative research on Task 4.2 ‘Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level’ of the LIFT project between UNIKENT (United Kingdom-UK) (Task Leader), BOKU (Austria), INRAE (France), VetAgro Sup (France), DEMETER (Greece), MTA KRTK (Hungary), UNIBO (Italy), IRWiR PAN (Poland), IAE-AR (Romania), SLU (Sweden), SRUC (UK). Beginning with the Delphi exercise, this deliverable presents qualitative information extracted from stakeholders in the following four steps. First, the researchers build a presentation of differences between ecological and conventional farming approaches in each CSA. Second, stakeholders elaborate on how they understand ecological farming approaches to exist in each CSA. Third, stakeholders develop a scenario of adoption of ecological approaches to farming depending on two factors: pattern (ecological farms forming clusters or randomly spread within the territory) and rate of adoption 10 years in the future. After establishing this scenario across two rounds, the stakeholders explore the socio-economic effects of their adoption scenario. The Q-methodology then presents a Q-set of statements that the Delphi has developed and, through factor analysis,studies the key stakeholder perspectives of the socio-economic effects of the perceived adoption of ecological practices in 10 years in the future. Four key results can be derived from the Delphi exercise and the Q-methodology. First, a higher adoption of ecological farming approaches, especially so at a 50% adoption rate, is mostly thought by stakeholders in the Delphi Exercise to lead to an increase in skill level and quality of life in on-farm employment. This is as a result of an increased diversity of farming enterprises on farms using ecological farming approaches, the interest generated from this, the knowledge of natural processes and biology required, engagement with nature and change in machinery that is coming into the industry. Strongly related to this need for skills is a predicted increase in the number of advisers and civil servants to deal with more complicated farms and incentives as well as monitoring of ecological effects on farm. An increase in required skill level is repeated across all Q-studies. Second, especially where farms are clustered together, Delphi Exercise respondents predict an increase in the trade of inputs such as manure and compost replacing synthetic fertiliser, as well as more sharing of capital and labour. Q-methodology highlights that these clusters may support a stronger social movement, more consumers buying local food and increase collaboration between farmers. Supply chains are expected to become shorter as farmers sell more directly and there are fewer intermediaries upstream of the farming sector. As farmers collaborate more with each other on environmental objectives, trading inputs and sharing best practices, farmer relationships should improve in rural communities. Third, Delphi exercise finds that contracting, machinery purchasers, and machinery traders and dealers could increase, decrease or display no change – the anticipated effects are mixed. Stakeholders are in no doubt that machinery use will change and therefore new skills will need to be learnt, but the wider effect on machinery purchase is uncertain. However, stakeholders conclude that a greater specialisation in machinery will occur leading to changes in farm management as well as the suppliers of this machinery. Q-methodology highlights that ecological practices will not mean the end of machinery and a lot more labour – often machinery will be useful in weeding and reducing physical labour as technology has significantly improved and skills are improving too in order to use these technologies. Fourth, Delphi respondents argued that although rural populations might be little affected by ecological farming, a shift in people moving from urban to rural settlements, and thereby a higher rural population density, seeking a more attractive rural environment, might contribute to higher local consumer demand. The Q-methodology highlights that where there is high adoption, rural areas are expected to become more attractive, as landscapes will have a much greater variety of crops instead of fields of monocrops. This variety of crops may include agroforestry (farmers interested in ecological approaches to farming may also be interested in agroforestry as a way of boosting their yields and protecting crops and livestock from the elements) as well as intercropping

Creating Conditions for Harnessing the Potential of Transitions to Agroecology in Europe and Requirements for Policy

Food systems require reorientation to take greater account of interactions with the environment, economy, health and society. Transitions to agroecological farming practices and systems can connect policy areas and realise environmental, economic and social aims. These transitions provide a lens for reviewing policy, practice and behaviours of actors in farming systems and value chains, identification of barriers to uptake, and policy areas to which they contribute or where there are gaps. Developing social and human capital, and governance structures that enable transitions to agroecology are key to their prospects of success. Education and life-long learning are key to developing the knowledge and skills of younger generations of land managers and other actors in value chains, throughout their careers. The outcome sought is for a shared understanding of the benefits of agroecological practices and systems, creating opportunities to rebalance policies towards delivering climate neutrality, reversing biodiversity loss, and enhancing rights of citizens. To realise those opportunities policies and strategies should be coherent across territorial and systems levels, and tailored to place, system, people, and stages of transitions. Overall, they should be designed to ensure all citizens are beneficiaries of transitions to agroecological farming systems, over the long term, and that no-one or place is disadvantaged by the processes of change or the outcome intended

What Does Ecological Farming Mean for Farm Labour?

Summary: Ecological farming, such as organic and low‐input farming, is gaining popularity in the public discourse. One question is how this type of farming may impact farm labour from a socio‐economic point of view. The article first discusses how low‐input farming practices (i.e. with lower reliance on inputs derived from fossil fuels) may affect the economic returns to labour, measured as the farm’s revenue per hour of labour input, on data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) in 2004‐‐2015 for four European countries. Returns to labour appear to be highest at the two extremes – very low‐input farms and highly intensive farms. Farms in the low‐input end of the spectrum are in the minority, while the overwhelming majority of farms are intensive and have internal economic incentives to intensify further. The article also analyses how working conditions differ between organic and conventional dairy farms in two European countries based on interviews with farmers in 2019. Results show that all dimensions of working conditions are affected by being an organic farm or not, but this is not the only factor. There are many influences on working conditions, such as the production context and workforce composition

What Does Ecological Farming Mean for Farm Labour?

Summary: Ecological farming, such as organic and low‐input farming, is gaining popularity in the public discourse. One question is how this type of farming may impact farm labour from a socio‐economic point of view. The article first discusses how low‐input farming practices (i.e. with lower reliance on inputs derived from fossil fuels) may affect the economic returns to labour, measured as the farm’s revenue per hour of labour input, on data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) in 2004‐‐2015 for four European countries. Returns to labour appear to be highest at the two extremes – very low‐input farms and highly intensive farms. Farms in the low‐input end of the spectrum are in the minority, while the overwhelming majority of farms are intensive and have internal economic incentives to intensify further. The article also analyses how working conditions differ between organic and conventional dairy farms in two European countries based on interviews with farmers in 2019. Results show that all dimensions of working conditions are affected by being an organic farm or not, but this is not the only factor. There are many influences on working conditions, such as the production context and workforce composition

Development and characterization of phytosterol-enriched oil microcapsules for foodstuff application

Phytosterols are lipophilic compounds contained in plants and have several biological activities. The use of phytosterols in food fortification is hampered due to their high melting temperature, chalky taste, and low solubility in an aqueous system. Also, phytosterols are easily oxidized and are poorly absorbed by the human body. Formulation engineering coupled with microencapsulation could be used to overcome these problems. The aim of this study was to investigate the feasibility of encapsulating soybean oil enriched with phytosterols by spray-drying using ternary mixtures of health-promoting ingredients, whey protein isolate (WPI), inulin, and chitosan as carrier agents. The effect of different formulations and spray-drying conditions on the microencapsules properties, encapsulation efficiency, surface oil content, and oxidation stability were studied. It was found that spherical WPI-inulin-chitosan phytosterol-enriched soybean oil microcapsules with an average size below 50 μm could be produced with good encapsulation efficiency (85%), acceptable level of surface oil (11%), and water activity (0.2–0.4) that meet industrial requirements. However, the microcapsules showed very low oxidation stability with peroxide values reaching 101.7 meq O2/kg of oil just after production, and further investigations and optimization are required before any industrial application of this encapsulated system

L'art de la mémoire dans le territoire arpenté

Aussi, pour exercer cette faculté de l'art de la mémoire, doit-on, selon le conseil de Simonide, choisir en pensée des lieux distincts fragments de territoire, former des images mentales de choses espaces mettant en scène les notions qu'on veut retenir dévoiler, puis ranger ces images scénographies dans les divers lieux fragments de territoire. Alors l'ordre des lieux le chemin (la marche) conserve l'ordre des choses notions; les images scénographies rappellent les choses notions elles-mêmes. Les lieux fragments de territoire sont les tablettes de cire sur lesquelles on écrit ; les images scénographies sont les lettres qu'on y trace. [Cicero, De Oratore (II, 86-88)]. ; Cela fait, dès qu'il s'agit de raviver révéler la mémoire des faits, tous ces lieux sont parcourus tour à tour et les choses notions déposées sont demandées saisies à leur gardien par le marcheur, car la vue de chacun d'eux des espaces scénographiques renvoie à leurs détails respectifs. [Quintilian, Institutio Oratorio (XI, 2)].

Identifying and assessing intensive and extensive technologies in European dairy farming

In order to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, the European Union (EU) promotes extensive farming. However, identifying such farms across countries and assessing their performance for policy purposes remains challenging. This paper combines a latent class stochastic frontier model (LCSFM) with a novel nested metafrontier approach. The resulting model enables the identification of intensive and extensive farms across countries, estimation of farm efficiency and identification of different technology gaps. Based on Farm Accountancy Data Network data of French, Irish and Austrian dairy farms,we find poorer environmental but better economic performance of intensive farms, compared to extensive farms. The largest productivity differences stem from technology gaps and not from inefficiency. The approach enables a more nuanced analysis of sources of inefficiency to assist policy design for future green payments in the EU.ISSN:0165-1587ISSN:1464-361