Indicators of resource use and environmental impact for use in a decision aid for Danish livestock farmers

Farmers lack well documented sets of farm level indicators to allow their own evaluation of environmental impact and to stimulate the development of more environment friendly farming practices. A set of farm level indicators of resource use and environmental impact on livestock farms was developed as part of a decision aid for farmers. The indicators were meant to be part of an extended farm account and included the surpluses and efficiencies of N, P and Cu, the energy use per kg grain and per kg milk or meat, pesticide treatment index (TFI), % unsprayed area, % small biotopes on the farm, and % weeds in grain crops. The indicators were tested on 20 Danish dairy and pig farms over a period of 3 years in order to see if they were suitable for use in the farmer’s management. The third year, farm gate surpluses varied between 89 and 265 kg N ha−1, 2 and 31 kg P ha−1 and 0.1 and 0.8 kg Cu ha−1. Energy use varied between 2.1 and 4.1 MJ kg−1 milk and between 14 and 20 MJ kg−1 live weight pig sold. For all indicators, except energy use per kg grain, the variation in indicator levels between farms was more important than the variation between years within each farm. There was significant variation between farms after correction for stocking rates and soil-and farm types, which suggests that the indicators reflect differences in management practise on comparable farms. It was demonstrated that these differences between similar farms and between the years on the individual farms might be explained by the detailed knowledge of management of the farms’ different subsystems (herd and crops). The information given by the indicators is discussed from environmental and management points of view and problems of defining and interpreting the indicators are identified. Given further development of indicators for soil quality and nature values, the farm level indicators seem a promising way of enabling farmers to include environmental topics in their management

Farming the future

The sustainable production of high quality food, reducing dependency on high energy inputs, improving environmentaland nature conservation, climate change adaptation, animalwelfare and rural livelihoods, are all important challenges faced byEuropean agriculture which can be addressed through organicagricultural practices. However, while the sector has grown dramatically in recent times,much more research needs to be done for this innovative field to come to realise its true potential. As such, the CORE Organic II ERA-Net aims at an effective and sustainable transnational researchprogramme, and has identified common research priorities for the organic sector where a transnational approach will give added value, has initiated research projects, and is organising project monitoring and the dissemination of results. PEN asked Dr Niels Halberg, director of the International Centre for Research in Organic Food Systems (ICROFS) and co-ordinator of the CORE Organic II ERA-Net about the benefits the initiative can bring, the project selection process, and his views on the future of organic agriculture research funding, both at a European and national level

The importance of support to coordination of the European organic research

Europe has been among the global leaders in research and innovation in high-quality food from organic agriculture serving the dual purpose of responding to consumers’ demand in high-value markets and respond-ing to national and EU agri-environmental and rural development poli-cies. There has been — and still is — a great need for research and innovation in organic food and farming because of its relatively recent development and because it is an alternative, which is very knowledge-intensive: a knowledge that cannot always be covered by results from mainstream agricultural research. In order to follow the principles of organic agriculture as laid out in, for example, Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 (1) (e.g. ‘the appropriate design and management of bio-logical processes based on ecological systems using natural resources which are internal to the system’), it is necessary to further develop the research-based knowledge on agro-ecological methods and on careful processing in practice. Moreover, research is needed to assess the de-gree to which organic agriculture complies with the principles and — in a wider perspective — delivers on the promises regarding important societal goals (e.g. reducing externalities)

How may quality asurance systems in food chains include environmental aspects based on life cycle methodology?

The number of Quality Assurance Systems (QAS) for food products is increasing and so is the topics they cover, from traditional intrinsic product characteristics such as percent meat in slaughtered pigs and protein content in milk to food safety issues such as zoonoses and pesticide residues and in some cases aspects of animal welfare. This development is linked to de-mands for risk controlling systems such as HACCP and traceability systems that would allow food safety problems to be traced to a small number of producers or farms. The large retail companies (supermarkets) are an important driving force for this development because of their efforts to build consumer trust in food products and loyalty to the companies own brands. Envi-ronmental characteristics of food products and information on their production methods are be-coming part of some QAS but not mostly in the form of qualitative information e.g. certification that the farmers have used Good Agricultural Practice (GAP). The paper gives examples of this and then discuss this development in relation to LCA based environmental appraisal of food products. The development of quantitative (tools for) environmental appraisal of agriculture and food production is becoming more productoriented improving the possibilities of assessing the regional and global impacts of food production chains and consumption. But these systems building on LCA does not so far seem to be linked with the development of QAS for food. The paper finally discuss the possibilities for linking the food safety related traceability systems and gives an example of on-going work to establish LCA based QAS in a meat processing system

Energy use and Green house gas emission in organic agriculture

Reduction of fossil energy use has a two-fold aim namely reducing the dependence of a limited, non-renewable resource and reduction of emissions of green house gasses (GHG). Consumers interested in reducing their carbon footprint from food consumption may consider whether a shift towards eating organic foods will do the job? This involves two questions: Is organic food more energy efficient and –given that one is dedicated to eating organic – which products and which producers results in a lower GHG emission. From a farmer perspective it is interesting to know how the carbon footprint of the production may be reduced. Over time the principles for organic agriculture has included specific references to the question of reducing the use of non-renewable energy (Woodward & Vogtman, 2004) and this is still an explicit part of the objectives of the Danish organic farming movement. It is, however, questionable to which degree these objectives have been achieved as regards the dependence on fossil energy in the present form of organic agriculture. The majority of farms still depend on fossil energy for traction and electricity and energy self-reliance seems not to be a major concern in practice. As regards fossil energy use, the major difference to conventional farming is that the rejection of chemical fertilizer reduces the indirect energy use in organic farming and that the yields are lower, thus reducing the solar energy captured in crops. However, as regards the emission of GHG the picture is more diverse and the net GHG emissions can be lower in organic agriculture compared with conventional. The aim of this paper is thus to discuss the different perspectives of reducing energy use and GHG emissions from organic agriculture by presenting results regarding · Different methods and results of comparison of energy use efficiency in organic agriculture · The potential for energy savings and self-reliance in organic agriculture · The relative importance of fossil energy use for emissions of GHG from production of different organic products · The relative importance of different organic and conventional food items for the total GHG emission of food consumptio

How to include on-farm biodiversity in LCA on food?

Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) of food and agriculture generally include potential effects on global warming, eutrophication, ecotoxocity and acidification some of which again affect biodiversity. However, LCA most often does not include specific indicators of the product’s or agricultural system’s impact (negative or positive) on biodiversity. Using LCA methodology on agricultural products makes it highly relevant to assess the impacts of land use. Some LCA’s include a simple category of land use. This is sometimes interpreted as “nature occupation”. However, if this is the only impact category addressing land use related biodiversity, the LCA cannot distinguish between different forms of agricultural systems, which may differ in their biodiversity impact (e.g. organic versus conventional products). Biologists as well as policy makers consider some agricultural land use, such as grazing semi-natural grasslands, as beneficial for biodiversity preservation. Thus, land use in food production systems can have both positive and negative impacts on biodiversity compared to leaving the land untouched by humans. Simple, operational indicators to account for the different impacts on biodiversity in food production systems could take the point of departure in the most important factors affecting biodiversity (easy obtainable pressure indicators) instead of estimating e.g. species diversity directly

Coordination of European Transnational Research in Organic Farming Systems

Organic agriculture and food markets have grown considerably, and organic agriculture addresses important challenges of European agriculture, such as the sustainable production of high-quality food, reducing dependency on high energy inputs, improving environmental and nature conservation, climate change adaptation, animal welfare and rural livelihoods. Organic farming and food systems still have a huge potential for innovation and improved solutions. Research activities will be important for this

Coordination of European transnational research in organic food and farming

Research in organic food and farming is a fairly new, but rapidly ex-panding, discipline on the European research scene. One of the problems faced by the authorities seeking to initiate research programmes in organic food and farming is that the present research effort in Europe is caracterised by small research communities, which are often scattered and fragmented both geographically and institutionally. Therefore a gathering of the dispersed expertise to a critical mass in order to increase the competitive quality and relevance of the research as well as the dessemination and use of research is needed

Is Organic Farming an Unjustified Luxury in a World with too many hungry People?

The soaring food prices on the global markets over the past one to two years have given proponents of classical Green Revolution thinking an opportunity to renew their claims that high input agriculture based on chemical fertilizer and pesticides is the blanket solution for poor countries and farmers. This situation has also led others to question whether we should abandon all the environmental considerations in agricultural policies over the last 25 years, and relieve the regulatory burden on agriculture, and put food production in full throttle like in the good old days in the 1970s. However, as always, the solutions proposed depend on the perception of the problem. In fact, there is little evidence that just producing more food in the North will help solve the food insecurity in the South in a sustainable way. Nor is it evident that returning to subsi-dized artificial fertilizers in the South would make any significant contribution to addressing the food insecurity among those communities of the South that are currently food insecure

Farm level environmental indicators; are they useful? An overview of Green Accounting Systems for European farms

Green accounts or Input-Output Accounting systems (IOA) have been developed in countries with intensive agricultural production to facilitate voluntary improvements in farm environmental performance. There is a need for an overview of indicators used and a review of results and experiences reported. Ten IOA systems covering the topics of the farm's use of nutrients, pesticides and energy were selected from a survey of 55 systems and compared in this paper. The approaches and indicators used vary from systems based on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) to accounts based systems that use physical input-output units. Many IOA systems use farm gate nutrient balances, pesticide use per ha and energy use per kg product. These indicators are easy to calculate but the resulting value needs separate interpretation for the farmer. Other systems include modelled emissions and rate the yearly farm results using closed scales, which allows for easy interpretation but builds on implicit normative assumptions of best practices. Participating farmers were most often reported to be motivated for the use of IOA but empirical evidence of improved environmental farm performance was scarce. IOA systems should be linked with production planning tools used by the advisory services. Farmers and advisors needs better reference values to evaluate the indicator levels (environmental performance) on the individual farm possibly based on analysis of a larger number of farms. The statistical properties of IOA indicators need to be researched regarding: (1) The relation between changed management practice and changes in indicator values on a given farm over a period of time. (2) The relative importance of systematic vs. coincidental differences in environmental performance of a set of farms. It is concluded that IOA systems could become effective tools for agri-environmental improvement of European farms given further development and standardisation