Diversity As A Key To Analyze French Organic Farms: Methodological Elements

Summary

Many typologies of organic farms exist but they fail to take into account diversity, i.e. the combination of productions, which is a core principle in agroecology.Our aims were multifold: i) increase the knowledge of the organic farms (OF) ii) better characterize organic systems in terms of diversity, iii) analyze the territorial distribution of diversity types, and iv) compare diversity between conventional farms (CF) and OF.The French Observatory of Organic Agriculture (ONAB) database from Agence Bio was used. It collects data from all French organic farms and provides detail on surfaces and livestock (about 200 species).We explored complementary methods to build a classification able to reflect the type and level of diversity within the farms’ systems, and to take into account their localization. Nevertheless it was challenging and further work is needed to improve methods to better characterize organic systems with this focus on diversity.