Farm- and product-level biodiversity assessment of conventional and organic dairy production in Austria

Abstract

The novel method developed for this study evaluates the impact of farming practices on farmland biodiversity, allowing for the assessment of the biodiversity potential of dairy farms at farm and product levels. We linked farming practices as pressure indicators to the species number and abundance of 11 indicator species groups (ISGs), evaluated semi-quantitatively by expert judgements. We calculated biodiversity potential based on food-web relationships between the ISGs, using Monte Carlo simulations for the analysis of uncertainty of expert assessments. We applied the assessment model to 8925 dairy farms from seven different Austrian regions, using official statistical data sets at farm level and interviews with farmers and experts. The results show that the approach can be used to identify differences in the biodiversity potential of farms and milk. Milk from organic farms received 4-79% higher biodiversity scores than milk from conventional farms in all regions. The application showed that in the case of Austrian dairy production, the approach can be used for assessments of both farms and products. However, the approach needs validation and, for product-level assessment, further development to cope with longer supply chains or compound products from different bio-geographic regions.

Using the Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine (SMART) for the Systematic Analysis of Trade-Offs and Synergies between Sustainability Dimensions and Themes at Farm Level

“…Furthermore, uncertainty in expert assessments needs to be addressed. Therefore, further expert evaluations on the importance of the indicators for different sub-themes will be linked an uncertainty analysis using Monte-Carlo Simulations based on a procedure used in [30]. For some sub-themes (e.g., Energy Use, Greenhouse Gases and Profitability), a more quantitative approach (e.g., life cycle assessment or calculation of gross margins) could be implemented alternatively.…”

“…An analysis with the SMART-Farm Tool can help to understand the trade-offs and synergies which would be a first step to finding appropriate solutions, as it allows for the identification of difficulties and potentially unsuccessful solutions right from the beginning (e.g., such as those that disregard the presence of specific trade-offs), as well as the most promising solutions (e.g., those that identify and build on specific synergies). The combination of an application of the SMART-Farm Tool with specific tools for extension, such as RISE [35], OCIS PG-Tool [36] or tools targeted to single topics, e.g., biodiversity [30,37] or greenhouse gas emissions [38,39], should be decided based on the performance measures in a status-quo analysis.…”

Conceptual approach to assess farm-level sustainability in the Hungarian organic sector

“…It uses the same basic structure as the Delphi method in a group situation. Opinions are gathered anonymously and presented to the group for discussion (Delbecq et al, 1975;Jeffreys, 2002;Schader et al, 2014b). For each thematic area, a separate group of experts is formed according to their expertise.…”

Evaluating the nature conservation value of field habitats: A model approach for targeting agri-environmental measures and projecting their effects

“…REPRO (Küstermann et al, 2010), ROTOR (Bachinger and Zander, 2007), MODAM (Sattler et al, 2010) or the current approach of Schader et al (2014)). These models allow for comparisons between farming systems or management practices.…”