Values and value conflicts in organic farming - Images and symbolic ideas as starting point for strategic planning in advisory and research work

Values and value conflicts play an important role in organic but also in non-organic farming. In discussions about the future way to go unconscious systems in human behaviour should be taken into account. Pictures, images and symbols are commonly used in marketing but are not really explored as a source for ethical orientation and strategic planning for farmers, advisors and researchers. Experiences with the use pictures and images in discussions with farmers and researchers and in advisory work (example of Bioland) about desirable sustainable futures will be reported. A further developed methodology and systematic, how to use pictures/images, is proposed

Integrative Ansätze und bildgestützte Methoden für den Umgang mit Wertekonflikten und Entscheidungsdilemmas im biologischen Landbau

The integrity of organic agriculture and its promises are seriously questioned in discussions in the media, as well as in the internal conventionalization debate. To overcome situations which undermine credibility and development opportunities, there is a need for better dealing with value conflicts and faced dilemmas. For this purpose, science can provide more holistic approaches and methods for analysis and development processes, which better integrate human factors of the system. As neurobiology and psychology underline, emotions, inner images and unconscious drivers are influential factors of thinking and behaviour. With the development of the “value-image method”, the authors made experiences supporting this approach. Now there is a need to further develop more integrative, also images-supported tools and process design for dealing with value conflicts and decision dilemmas in a creative and constructive way. This also aims at the development and integration of a fourth dimension of sustainability

Preserving tropical soil organic matter at watershed level. A possible contribution of urban organic wastes

The goal of this paper is to put the issue of preserving Soil Organic Matter (SOM) into a regional, urban-rural, context. In doing so, we apply the method of material flux analysis to a watershed in Boyacá in Colombia. We estimate the order of magnitude of the dry organic matter and carbon fluxes between the rural and urban parts of the region, including estimates on biomass growth, tillage, organic waste, and sewage. These estimates are used to derive potentials for carbon cycling between rural and urban areas. It is shown that (i) for the municipality of Tunja, the treated organic wastes produced in the urban area could add about 30% to the current carbon input into arable soils; (ii) to preserve the organic carbon content in soils in Tunja over the long-term, either, erosion control measures have to be implemented and/or the total treated urban organic wastes have to be concentrated on about 1/5 of the agricultural area. However, such an attempt has to consider the possible trade off between allocation needs (poor farmers on the hillside) and allocation costs (transportation and distribution costs