Studying the effect of organic farming on rural landscapes: Issues of methodology and scale

Summary

Implying changes in land use practices, the conversion from conventional to organic farming has a potential effect on the spatial arrangement of land cover and thus on structure and content of natural and semi-natural landscape elements. Several studies point to that organic farming has a positive effect on the content of natural and semi-natural elements in Danish and other European landscapes. However, these findings seem biased by inadequate sampling methods and narrow spatial and temporal study scales. On the contrary, the few studies using more comprehensive samples and broader scales, indicate that variations in the content of natural and semi-natural landscape elements are influenced by regional and local biophysical variations in relation to the localisation of organic farms rather than by organic or conventional farming as such. Consequently, in the context of a current Danish research project on this issue, this paper argues for two supplementing methodological approaches. The first, using national datasets on landscape features, farm characteristics and biophysical conditions. The second, using aerial photos for the last 5 decades together with agricultural statistics, questionnaires and biophysical base maps within larger continuous case areas.