In this review, we examine the debate surrounding the role for organic agriculture in future food production systems. Typically represented as a binary organic–conventional question, this debate perpetuates an either/or mentality. We question this framing and examine the pitfalls of organic–conventional cropping systems comparisons. The review assesses current knowledge about how these cropping systems compare across a range of metrics related to four sustainability goals: productivity, environmental health, economic viability, and quality of life. We conclude by arguing for reframing the debate, recognizing that farming systems fall along gradients between three philosophical poles—industrial, agrarian, and ecological—and that different systems will be appropriate in different contexts. Despite evidence for lower yields in organic crop systems, we found considerable evidence for environmental and social benefits. Given these advantages, and the potential for improving organic systems, we echo calls for i...

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Organic and Conventional Agriculture: A Useful Framing?

Is organic agriculture in line with the EU-Nitrate directive? On-farm nitrate leaching from organic and conventional arable crop rotations

In this paper the behavioural change framework of Ajzen and Fishbein is used to explore whether attitudes towards organic farming, the perceived social pressure of the environment and the perceived feasibility of organic farming standards on the farm determine the willingness of farmers to convert to organic farming methods. These variables together with the business and personal objectives and the organic farming information seeking behaviour of the farmer were used in an ordinal regression procedure to predict the intended organic farming conversion behaviour of conventional farmers.

Determinants of Organic Farming Conversion

This report reviews the evidence base on how agricultural policies impact environmental sustainability and productivity of the agriculture sector, including the potentially contradictory signals policies may send. It considers impacts for specific policy types, classified according to the OECD’s Producer Support Estimate (PSE) classification for agricultural support. At the farm level, key pathways for environmental impacts identified in the literature are firstly incentivising a change in agricultural production at the intensive margin, extensive margin or entry-exit margin, and secondly the dynamic impacts of land use choice. Beyond this, policies can also affect agriculture’s environmental performance by stimulating (or stifling) the provision of environmental services. Environmental impacts from agricultural policy depend on several factors. Individual responses to economic incentives created by agricultural policies vary, producing variations in environmental impacts. Variation also occurs due to location-specific physical factors, including landscape characteristics, as well as the cumulative effects of decisions across actors and across time. Finally, impacts may differ across scales.

Impacts of agricultural policies on productivity and sustainability performance in agriculture: A literature review

Formal institutions impact on the dynamics of land use change through their objectives, actions and decision-making processes in response to socio-economic or environmental changes such as climate change. The effects and interplay of these actions are not fully understood, and hence, institutional processes are rarely integrated in modelling analyses of land use change. The complex effects of institutional interactions within land systems can be better understood through modelling approaches that address the heterogeneity of the institutional actors involved and how their decisions affect temporal and spatial dynamics. In this paper, we present an agent-based model of autonomous land managers interacting with institutional agents at two spatial scales. We explore different parameters of institutional intervention (subsidy rate, triggers for action, delay in monitoring, scale-based precedence) under socio-economic drivers and analyse key metrics such as the maximum over- and undersupply of ecosystem services, connectivity of land uses, and degree of change in land use patterns. Levels of subsidy and action triggers have the greatest impact on the magnitude of land use change and the maximum oversupply of ecosystem services. In terms of achieving institutional objectives, subsidy rate is the most important single parameter in the model. Furthermore, we find non-linearity with variations in parameters that have important implications for current land use change modelling and requirements for empirical studies of land use planning institutions. Finally, the effects of high-end climate change may require entirely novel institutional behaviours.

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Modelling dynamic effects of multi-scale institutions on land use change

We analyze the effects of the interactions that the two pillars of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy—market support and rural development—have on farmers’ uptake of organic farming practices. Special attention is given to the 2003 reform, which substantially altered the relative importance of the two types of support by decoupling direct agricultural payments from the production of a specific crop. In our empirical analysis we study the case of Sweden, making use of the variation in the timing of farmers’ decisions regarding participation in support programs. We estimate a dynamic non-linear unobserved effects probit model to account for unobserved individual heterogeneity and state dependence. Our results indicate the existence of a negative effect of the market support system in place when organic farming techniques were adopted before the 2003 reform. However, this effect is reversed by the introduction of decoupling. Furthermore, the effects of support differ between certified and non-certified organic production: both pillars have significant effects on non-certified organic farming, whereas certified organic farming is exclusively driven by agro-environmental subsidies.

Mónica M. Jaime

Papers

Interactions between CAP Agricultural and Agri-Environmental Subsidies and Their Effects on the Uptake of Organic Farming