2943: Contributions of organic farming to a sustainable environment

Pfiffner, Lukas; Häring, Anna; Dabbert, Stephan; Stolze, Matthias and Piorr, A. (2001) Contributions of organic farming to a sustainable environment. Paper presented at European Conference - Organic Food and Farming, Copenhagen, Denmark, 10.-11.05.2001; Published in Organic Food and Farming. Towards Partnership and Action in Europe. 10-11 May 2001, Copenhagen, Denmark, page pp. 115-123. Dänish Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries.

Summary

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.

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