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Are public payments for organic farming cost-effective? Combining a decision-support model with LCA

  • LCA FOR AGRICULTURE
  • Published:
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

The agricultural sector fulfils several functions such as the production of food energy and landscape conservation. An equilibrium between economic development and environmental protection should be found and research should aid political decision-making. In recent years, great efforts have been made to assess the environmental and economic implications of changes in both environmental and agricultural policies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been extended by cost functions and social parameters. The validation of suggestions for political measures can be improved by combining existing environmental and economic models. This approach is applied in this paper in order to compare an increased support for organic farming with specific environmental policy measures, focusing on the resulting impacts and socioeconomic indicators.

Materials and methods

The LCA tool Swiss Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment (SALCA) has been linked with the economic optimisation model Swiss Agricultural Sector Forecasting System (SILAS). Since the focus lies on agricultural production, the farm gate represents the system boundary of the LCA. By linking SALCA with SILAS, the classic LCA impact categories have been extended by socioeconomic indicators. A reference scenario representing the assumed development of economic conditions between 2008 and 2015 was varied by a support for organic farming and four specific policy measures (support for ecological compensation areas and a tax on energy, fertiliser and concentrates, respectively). To remain comparable, the changes in total payments were set to the same amount in all scenarios (100 million CHF).

Results and discussion

A support for organic farming would have favourable effects on several environmental and socioeconomic indicators, but the differences compared to a combination of the four specific measures are small. However, some of these single measures could reach parts of the targets more efficiently: an energy tax would stimulate the application of available energy-saving measures, and a tax on concentrates would lead to a shift from intensive animal husbandry to crop production, reducing imports of concentrates and emissions of ammonia. Overall, the predicted developments in product and factor prices combined with the assumed reductions of public payments until 2015, as represented by the reference scenario, have the greatest effect on environmental impacts.

Conclusions

Theoretically, specific policy measures are more efficient than measures directed towards multiple goals. Especially in the case of agriculture, however, a specific measure not only has an impact on the associated target but affects all agricultural functions. The results of the model combination suggest that a support for organic farming lowers the risk of undesirable side effects on environmental and socioeconomic indicators. Before implementing more specific measures, their impacts on the different functions should be estimated. For this purpose, a combination of decision-support models with LCA may be an appropriate instrument.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon ART, Reckenholzstr. 191, 8046, Zurich, Switzerland

    Albert Zimmermann, Daniel Baumgartner, Thomas Nemecek & Gérard Gaillard

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  1. Albert Zimmermann
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  2. Daniel Baumgartner
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  3. Thomas Nemecek
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  4. Gérard Gaillard
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Correspondence to Albert Zimmermann.

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Zimmermann, A., Baumgartner, D., Nemecek, T. et al. Are public payments for organic farming cost-effective? Combining a decision-support model with LCA. Int J Life Cycle Assess 16, 548–560 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-011-0286-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-011-0286-6

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