Diversity as a key concept for organic agriculture

Summary

Diversity is a key concept of organic agriculture and is intuitively perceived as having positive, but not always explicit, consequences for the internal functioning of the farm as well as for the impact on environment and farmland nature. In two groups of specialised organic farms (arable and dairy) and a group of mixed farms, links between production diversity and diversity at the scales above and below, as well as relations to potential farmland biodiversity, are examined. Results show that diversity in different scales are not consistently correlated, i.e. neither high diversity in farm household on-farm activities, nor diversity in agricultural production are linked to high crop and land use diversity. Furthermore, there are no simple relations between diversity measures and potential benefits for farmland biodiversity.