Will policy support for organic farming be justified in the future? The environmental impacts of organic farming

Introduction: In the European Union, organic farming has experienced a dynamic development in the 1990s, in part debited to financial support from agricultural policy measures. The most commonly used argument in support of organic farming is its positive environmental effects. However, support of organic farming practices on those grounds is only justified if these actually result in less negative environmental impacts than conventional farming. Stolze et al. (1999) reviewed existing research results up to 1997 on this topic and compiled a qualitative comparative evaluation based on an adapted OECD environmental indicator concept for agriculture (OECD 1997). On a per hectare basis, organic farming showed to be less detrimental with respect to most indicators than conventional farming. This paper will evaluate new evidence on the issue, taking results on a per output basis and the most recent developments in general EU agricultural legislation and organic standards into account. Materials and Methods: The OECD set of environmental indicators for the agricultural sector adapted by Stolze et al. (1999) is used. Based on a literature review of research results compiled between 1997 and 2002 a qualitative assessment is given for the following indicator categories: i) ecosystem, ii) natural resources (soil, ground and surface water, climate and air), iii) farm input and output, iv) animal health and welfare. The effect of recent developments in general agriculture EU legislation and organic standards on the relative benefits of organic farming is evaluated to assess if conventional agriculture is approaching organic agriculture due to tightening general legislation. Additionally, the option of achieving beneficial effects on some indicator categories when combining organic production with a targeted management of non-productive areas is reviewed. Results and Discussion: Organic farming seems to perform better than conventional farming with respect to all considered indicators, but large differences exist between indicators. New evidence permitted the evaluation on a per output basis for some indicators. This changes the final qualitative assessment for some indicators or indicator categories compared to the results of Stolze et al. (2000). Recent developments in EU legislation on agriculture in general do not seem to fundamentally change the relative assessment of the environmental impacts of organic in comparison to conventional agriculture. However, some important developments are not yet reflected in research results, e.g. the EU organic animal husbandry standards (European Commission 1999) which were implemented only in the year 2000. Conclusions: Support to organic farming is justified due to its positive environmental effects. However, the relative benefits must continue to be monitored in the light of current developments in agricultural legislation and organic standards. Cost-benefit analyses of the environmental effects of organic farming support in comparison to other agri-environmental measures and conventional farming are needed

Environmental impacts of organic farming in Europe

Organic farming has become an important element of European agri-environmental policy due to increasing concern about the impact of agriculture on the environment. This book describes in detail the environmental and resource use impacts of organic farming relative to conventional farming systems, based on a set of environmental indicators for the agricultural sector on a European level. The policy relevance of the results is also discussed in detail

A policy relevant assessment of the environmental impacts of organic farming

Organic farming has become an important aspect of European agri-environmental policy. Since the implementation of EC Reg. 2078/92, the EU promotes organic farming based explicitly on its positive effects on the environment. The objective of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of organic farming's effects on the environment in comparison to conventional farming and to discuss the policy relevance of these issues. For this purpose the OECD set of environmental indicators for the agricultural sector has been adapted, taking into consideration only those indicators that are directly affected by the system of organic farming, as are the indicator categories ecosystem, natural resources, farm input and output, and health and welfare. Based on a survey of specialists in 18 European countries (all EU-member states plus NO, CH, and CZ) using a structured questionnaire and an extensive literature review, a conclusive assessment is given for each of the indicator categories. For most of the chosen indicator categories organic farming performs better than conventional farming on a per ha basis. These results are discussed with respect to their policy relevance. An increase in the area of organic farming would clearly improve the environmental performance of agriculture, as long as food production level is not a limiting factor. The question of whether there are other agri-environmental means of achieving a desired level of environmental performance that might be cheaper for society than organic production is discussed. It is concluded that the support of organic farming can be a useful part of the agri-environmental tool box, however, other, more specific instruments are also needed. Organic farming seems especially useful if broad environmental concerns are to be addressed

Quantum state transfer in disordered spin chains: How much engineering is reasonable?

The transmission of quantum states through spin chains is an important element in the implementation of quantum information technologies. Speed and fidelity of transfer are the main objectives which have to be achieved by the devices even in the presence of imperfections which are unavoidable in any manufacturing process. To reach these goals, several kinds of spin chains have been suggested, which differ in the degree of fine-tuning, or engineering, of the system parameters. In this work we present a systematic study of two important classes of such chains. In one class only the spin couplings at the ends of the chain have to be adjusted to a value different from the bulk coupling constant, while in the other class every coupling has to have a specific value. We demonstrate that configurations from the two different classes may perform similarly when subjected to the same kind of disorder in spite of the large difference in the engineering effort necessary to prepare the system. We identify the system features responsible for these similarities and we perform a detailed study of the transfer fidelity as a function of chain length and disorder strength, yielding empirical scaling laws for the fidelity which are similar for all kinds of chain and all disorder models. These results are helpful in identifying the optimal spin chain for a given quantum information transfer task. In particular, they help in judging whether it is worthwhile to engineer all couplings in the chain as compared to adjusting only the boundary couplings.Comment: 20 pages, 13 figures. Revised version, title changed, accepted by Quantum Information & Computatio

Robustness of spin-chain state-transfer schemes

This is a shortened and slightly edited version of a chapter in the collection "Quantum State Transfer and Network Engineering", edited by G.M. Nikolopoulos and I. Jex, where we review our own research about the robustness of spin-chain state-transfer schemes along with other approaches to the topic. Since our own research is documented elsewhere to a large extent we here restrict ourselves to a review of other approaches which might be useful to other researchers in the field

Contributions of organic farming to a sustainable environment

Summary and Conclusions For each indicator organic farming is ranked at least equal to conventional farming, while in the majority of environmental indicators organic farming performs better or much better. In two cases, the subjective confidence interval could allow conventional farming to appear as the preferable system (partly due to the lack of evident data). However, when considering the aggregation level of the indicator categories, the analysis becomes more uniform. With the exception of climate and air, organic farming performs better than conventional farming in all categories. None of the indicator categories showed that organic farming performed worse. A summary assessment of all indicator categories was not carried out in the table, however, the result is clear: organic farming is, in an area-related comparison, more environmentally friendly than conventional farming. This result confirms one of the basic assumptions of the political support for organic farming, as mentioned in the introduction. On the one hand, the environmental performance of farms depends on the farming intensity, while on the other hand it depends on bio-tope management of nonproductive areas. The combination of organic farming with the conservation of semi-natural habitats and valuable field margins offers a real option to meet many environmental goals, especially biodiversity, on agricultural land

Opportunities for farming in alpine countries – pathways to truly grassland-based beef and milk production in Austria and Switzerland

Farming in the alpine countries of Austria and Switzerland fulfils important economic, socio-cultural and ecological functions for society. However, even though both Austria and Switzerland have increasingly focused their agricultural policy towards ecology, in both countries negative environmental impacts of agriculture still have to be reduced massively