Assessing the Impact of Farm-Management Practices on Ecosystem Services in European Agricultural Systems: A Rapid Evidence Assessment

Many farm-management practices focus on maximizing production, while others better reconcile production with the regulation of ecological processes and sociocultural identity through the provisioning of ecosystem services (ESs). Though many studies have evaluated the performance of management practices against ES supply, these studies often focused on only a few practices simultaneously. Here, we incorporate 23 distinct management practices in a rapid evidence assessment to draw more comprehensive conclusions on their supply potential across 14 ESs in European agriculture. The results are visualized using performance indicators that quantify the ES-supply potential of a given management practice. In total, 172 indicators are calculated, among which cover crops are found to have the strongest positive impact on pollination-supply potential, while extensive livestock management is found to have the strongest negative impact for the supply potential for habitat creation/protection. The indicators also provide insight into the state of the peer-reviewed literature. At both the farm and territorial levels, the literature noticeably fails to evaluate cultural services. Further, disparities between the number of indicators composed at the farm and territorial levels indicate a systematic bias in the literature toward the assessment of smaller spatial levels

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

Translating agroecological practices into provisioners of ecosystem service: the search forenvironmental indicators in economics

International audienc

What are ecosystem services? On transformative tables and the search for supply and demand

This article contributes to exposing inner workings of academic research on Ecosystem Services (ES) and their indicators. A self-reflexive study in a lab of environmental economics for more than two years reveals how previous research on agroecological practices in Europe is reinterpreted in order to identify the delivery of ES. We document the difficulties encountered in the transformation process.We show that ES are operationalized through table-concepts. Two tables are used: the first one to extract data from their initial context and purify them from concepts and concerns in environmental sciences; and the second one to subsequently recomplexify these data into a new context of supply and demand. At the end of this process, the newly generated data have little to do with the scientific context from which they are originally derived. We describe the resistances to these transformations as well as the various strategies we employed to address the difficulties we encountered.By carefully tracing the transformations in our study we show the particular nature of ES, how they selectively rely on concepts from both environmental sciences and economics, and the way they hierarchize and hybridize some of these concepts. While some of our findings may be specific to the context of our study, which has concentrated on European, anthropogenic and agricultural environments, we believe that they provide a unique insight into the nature of ES

Farm, farm-group and territorial level impact of policies on the adoption of ecological approaches and the performance and sustainability of ecological agriculture

This deliverable presents the results of the research carried out in WP6 task 6.2 of the LIFT project, on the impact of policies on the adoption of ecological approaches and on the performance and sustainability of ecological agriculture. &nbsp;We first provide a short synthesis of the policy implications of the studies carried out in WP2, WP3 and WP4 of the LIFT project. These studies highlight some drawbacks of currently implemented schemes, such as the current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) first and second pillar subsidies that may not be adequate for extensive technologies. In addition, these studies advocate policy compensation schemes that take into consideration the income forgone, given the regional potential, both in terms of agricultural production and environmental endowments. We then focus on the effect of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) using meta-analysis and quasi-experimental methods for about 150 PES-schemes implemented worldwide. We find that the effect of PES largely depends on their characteristics. Among others, eligibility of Ecosystem Services (ES) providers, contract length, reference design, payment constraint, monitoring system and the implementation zone of the PES schemes appear to be correlated with the probability of achieving positive environmental results. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the PES-schemes investigated in this meta-analysis is shown to especially depend on the monitoring system implemented to ensure compliance and on the eligibility of ES providers. Using econometric analysis on French farm data, we also find that farmers&rsquo; incomes are not affected by their ecological practices, once the extra cost of these practices has been covered by the Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) payment or promote some efficiency gains. The real cost of the transition is therefore on average well compensated by these payments. It does not imply that farms earn extra profit, and thus appears to respect World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.</p

Innovative public and private measures to encourage the adoption of ecological practices and enhance the performance and sustainability of ecological agriculture

This deliverable presents the results of the research carried out in WP6 task 6.2 of the LIFT project, on the impact of policies on the adoption of ecological approaches and on the performance and sustainability of ecological agriculture. &nbsp;We first provide a short synthesis of the policy implications of the studies carried out in WP2, WP3 and WP4 of the LIFT project. These studies highlight some drawbacks of currently implemented schemes, such as the current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) first and second pillar subsidies that may not be adequate for extensive technologies. In addition, these studies advocate policy compensation schemes that take into consideration the income forgone, given the regional potential, both in terms of agricultural production and environmental endowments. We then focus on the effect of Payments for Environmental Services (PES) using meta-analysis and quasi-experimental methods for about 150 PES-schemes implemented worldwide. We find that the effect of PES largely depends on their characteristics. Among others, eligibility of Ecosystem Services (ES) providers, contract length, reference design, payment constraint, monitoring system and the implementation zone of the PES schemes appear to be correlated with the probability of achieving positive environmental results. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the PES-schemes investigated in this meta-analysis is shown to especially depend on the monitoring system implemented to ensure compliance and on the eligibility of ES providers. Using econometric analysis on French farm data, we also find that farmers&rsquo; incomes are not affected by their ecological practices, once the extra cost of these practices has been covered by the Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) payment or promote some efficiency gains. The real cost of the transition is therefore on average well compensated by these payments. It does not imply that farms earn extra profit, and thus appears to respect World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules.</p

How to improve the adoption, performance and sustainability of ecological farming

This deliverable D7.6 of the LIFT project is the final scientific deliverable of the project that was carried out during four years from May 2018 till April 2022. The deliverable summarises the methodologies used and the key results for the main research activities that were carried out in LIFT: definition of ecological agriculture; adoption of ecological approaches; farm performance of ecological agriculture; territorial sustainability of ecological agriculture; trade-offs and synergies across sustainability dimensions and scales; impact of policies; role of stakeholders. Recommendations in terms of policies, data and research needs, are then provided.</p