SESSION IV: DISCIPLINARY WORKING GROUP REPORTS

Socio-economic and Policy Studies Working Group - (Rapporteur: W. LOCKERETZ)

“Socio-economic and policy studies” covers a very broad range of research. Consequently, one cannot judge the strengths and weaknesses of a particular research method independently from the particular topic being studied.

Therefore, we first developed a two-dimensional classification of socio-economic and policy studies in organic farming. The first dimension is the level of the study. In increasing order, these are:

1. Sub-farm (individual field, crop or enterprise).
2. Whole farm.
3. Community.
4. Region or area.
5. Nation.
6. International (up to global).

The second dimension is the topics of interest. In no particular order, these are:

1. Economic performance.
2. Markets.
3. Social or personal (e.g. values, attitudes).
4. Environmental impacts.
5. Policy issues.

The Workshop participants classified their own research according to these categories. (In this exercise, we did not attempt to cover work by others). The participants’ research has predominantly fallen into several clusters:

1. Sub-farm or whole farm/economic performance.
2. Regional, national or international markets.
3. Regional, national or international policy issues.
4. Whole farm/social or personal.

A third dimension that must also be taken into account is the goals of the study of which we identify four possibilities:

1. Descriptive (studies that report what the current situation is in a particular aspect of organic farming, without any analysis, comparisons or considerations of alternatives).
2. Comparative (studies that compare organic and conventional farming with regard to performance measures such as yields, economic returns or environmental impacts).
3. Improvement (studies that try to improve the performance of an organic system according to any of these performance measures).
4. Projects (studies that attempt to predict the future status of organic farming under various assumptions or in response to various policy scenarios).

We then listed the methods that can be used in socio-economic and policy studies and rated the appropriateness of each method for studies with each of these possible goals. Time permitted us to do this for only two of the major combinations of level and topic of interest (given above).

For farm-level economic studies, possible methods are:

• Case studies (coded CS in the chart below):
• Surveys (S)
• Paired-farm comparison (PF)
• Linear programming (LP)
• Production budgets (PB)
• Farmer panel (FP)
• Expert group, e.g. Delphi method (EG).

The following summarizes the judgement of the group concerning the value of each of these methods for farm-level economic studies: (0 = not valuable; 1 = somewhat valuable; 2 = highly valuable):

For studies of markets at the regional or national level, case studies are appropriate but some additional methods become available.

• Price analysis (PA)
• Expert surveys (ES) [Note: in contrast to “expert group” above, this involves either mail or telephone survey of people in a particular position in the industry, whereas “expert group” involves more intensive use of people who are individually selected for their expertise and judgement.
• Life-cycle analysis (LA)
• Food chain analysis (FA)

For regional or national marketing studies, the Workshop’s judgement was as follows:

One important qualifier for these charts is that the ratings vary by country depending on where the country stands regarding previous research on organic farming and on the size of its organic farming sector. Consequently, these ratings would also change over time in a given country.

Soil Science and Plant Nutrient Management Working Group - (Rapporteur: P. von FRAGSTEIN and H. KLOEN)

There were ten participants from eight countries: Panohkov, P.P. (Bulgaria); Holberg, N. (Denmark); Gautronneau, Y. (France); Fragstein, P. von (Germany); Kloen, H. (The Netherlands); Hansen, S. (Norway); Brunner, T., Mäder, P. and Sharp, D. (Switzerland) and Philipps, L. (United Kingdom).

The overall task of the Working Group was put into a very wide frame. Before starting discussions about the specific points, questions of general importance in the context of agricultural research were tried to be clarified:

As a result of the introductory discussion, the group decided to slightly reorient the task of the Session. There was general agreement among the participants that research methods should be aimed at:

• improvement and maintenance of soil fertility; and
• efficient use of nutrients (maximum recycling).

A first step which is discussed below is the development of indicators for soil fertility and nutrient efficiency. This results in a list of indicators and a very provisional list of priorities.

Next steps to be taken could be:

· Comparison of parameters in terms of easy/low cost assessment, variation in time, suitability for different climates, soil types and land use. Based on such an overview, one or more sets of indicators could be formulated for general use.

Listing and comparing research methods aimed at improving/maintaining soil fertility and nutrient use in terms of:

• aggregation level (field/crop/farm/region);

• scope: one or more nutrients, designing farming systems or only manuring strategy, plant/animal production, one or more years, including yields, quality, economics.

Way of interaction with farming practice (see ‘On-farm Research’ Working Group).

A SWOT table was prepared for the cultivated soil profile (Gautronneau, et al., www.isara.fr/profilcultural)

Plant Production Working Group - (Rapporteur: C. STOPES and CHAIRMAN: D. ZNAOR)

Twelve experts from 12 countries participated, namely: P. Plamen (Bulgaria); H. Niels (Denmark), D. Cristophe (France); R.H. Jugen (Germany); K. Emmanouili (Greece); R. Laszlo (Hungary); Z. Darko (The Netherlands/Croatia) - Chairman; S.L. Elina (Norway); T. Ion (Romania); L-B. Magdalena (Slovak Republic); F. Padrout (Switzerland) and C. Stopes (United Kingdom) - Rapporteur.

Excerpts from the notes taken:

Conventional methods are used in 90 percent of OA research.

• Research should take into account:

  Time frame: short (farmer first), mid (industry, policy/society first), long (research first);

  Hierarchy: gene, variety, species, cropping system: vegetable, arable, grassland, perennial;

  Method: e.g. split-plot, modelling, etc.;

  Type: basic, strategic, applied, adaptive;

  Objectives: whose objectives?

  Position of the researcher: inside versus outside;

  Target group and relevance: consumers, policy makers, farmers, environmentalists, nature conservators, etc.;

• it is estimated that one full-time unit (research labour) is needed for a 20 ha experimental farm;

• analysis of variance (old), non-stocastics/non-orthogonal are non-statistical methods. Development of software enables more alternative statistics;

• conventional approach is more linear, while organic is more circular;

• in comparison studies, there should be a physical difference between the plots (e.g. 0.7 ha as used in DOC experiments is not sufficient in size from the biodiversity and pest and disease point of view);

• most of the industry based extension is input-supply and output-processing based;

• root architecture is an alternative parameter, too;

• types of research;

  basic (e.g. physiology of weed seed germination);
  strategic (e.g. germination in relation to daylight, temperature, etc.);
  applied (e.g. testing different weeding techniques);
  adaptive research.

In each of the research process phases (question identification, methods used, result interpretation and dissemination) either a conventional or alternative/novel route can be taken.

• What is holistic: integrating farmers, topics, wide-set of parameters to be measured, debating socio-economic issues, adopting anthroposophic concept, etc?

• Except image-capturing methods (paper-chromatography, christalography, sensitive chaos method) and phenomenology-methods developed in bio-dynamic agriculture there is hardly any other novel research method developed by OA (maybe only food quality testing method with biophotons). In this sense the myth of OA research methodologies as something unique has to be modified. The same accounts for the approach used e.g. on-farm, farmers-first, participatory and similar flags. In most cases, farmers are involved only in research at the farming system level. Often only two hours per month! It is highly questionable whether farmer’s “involvement” of two hours/month is “participation” and in some cases when farmers are just interviewed it might be more a misuse of term.

• OA researcher should be a scientist, technologist and artist at the same time.

• Research question approach and research methods practised in OA research might be less unique, novel, interdisciplinary and holistic than it is usually claimed. The wide set of parameters is what is in most cases holistic, interdisciplinary and novel in OA research; e.g. total system quality, animal welfare index, SA index, quality index (often presented with amaebae-like methods)

CROPPING SYSTEMS AND CROP PRODUCTION

Definition of System Boundaries

EXAMPLE QUESTIONS FROM GROUP

WORKING GROUP RANKING OF APPROACHES FOR ORGANIC FARMING R&D

*** “Split plot” includes e.g. lab/growth chamber; Glasshouse; Field experiments.

PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH APPROACH FOR ORGANIC CROP PRODUCTION R&D

Sustainable Plant Health Working Group - (Rapporteur: M. WOLFE)

Eight experts participated, namely: M.S. Wolfe (U.K.) - Rapporteur; S. Collaza (Italy), D. Dubois (Switzerland), E. Lammerts van Bueren (The Netherlands), R.G. McKinley (U.K.), I. Rasmussen (Denmark), T. Ruissen (Norway) and Tamm.

The group working on plant disease, pest and weed problems started by agreeing to change the name of the panel from ‘Crop Protection’ (used by pesticide organizations) to ‘Sustainable Plant Health’.

The first principle upon which all agreed, was to work primarily at the level of prevention rather than cure. This immediately implies that a reduction approach is inadequate since prevention involves the development of systems that need to be optimal for a wide range of social, environmental and economic considerations. This also highlights the difference between the essentially linear approach of conventional agriculture compared to the circularity of the organic approach, where different aspects affect and interact with other aspects. A further consequence is the need to develop a comprehensive ecological understanding of the problems encountered in consideration of pests, diseases and weeds.

However, it was recognized that the elements of a particular problem can be extracted from a system approach and then analysed in a reductionism sense, even though this may lead to problems in incorporating the research conclusions back into the system. Even more complex, however, is the concept of translating the research conclusions into a range of systems and to a range of individual farms.

This difficulty raised the question of defining the different levels at which we might work:

a) single factor analysis on field plots or in the laboratory;

b) ecologically integrative farming systems approach;

c) farmer approach, from the point-of-view of both necessary detail and of the individual unit being a specific farm.

Going from level c) to a) increases detailed understanding, but also increases the distance form the real world. Nevertheless, each level has a value for understanding and developing novel solutions, particularly from level a), to applications and the formulation of problems at level c). For level a), the group discussed the value of molecular biological and other sophisticated approaches to the research; it was generally agreed that these were acceptable provided they were used as tools and not as goals.

A SWOT (strength, weaknesses, opportunity and threats) analysis was applied to the three approaches. The points distribution was generally in favour of the level a) research approach. However, the group recognized that all three levels are required. It was clear that advantages at one level were often disadvantages at another. This also underlined the complementarity of the different levels.

The group also agreed that despite the points distribution, it was important in the short to medium term to place the first priority at level c), the farm approach, simply because this approach currently lags so far behind the others in terms of recognition, effort and understanding. It was also recognized that there are many difficulties in developing this level, for example: in the time required for adequate understanding of the problem, in finding appropriate methods of statistical analysis, in developing appropriate PhD topics and jobs and in the problem of publication and communication.

PLANT BREEDING SUB-GROUP

Organic agriculture depends on either old crop varieties or on modern varieties bred for use in non-organic agriculture, neither of which are bred for modern organic agriculture. Focused organic plant breeding would lead to major improvements in organic production, probably more so than from any other research area.

Organic breeding would select varieties and populations best fitted to organic soils and rotations and much better able to compete with weeds. Selection would also be directed to high performance of populations, mixtures and inter-crops, which are potentially capable of providing effective buffering against environmental variation.

Organic plant breeding should draw farmers back into the process from which they have been gradually excluded during this Century. Indeed, this should happen in all aspects of organic research, because of the dependence on farmer experience at higher levels of organization.

Another, major reason for concentration on plant and animal breeding, is the increase in GMOs in non-organic breeding and production. If the GMO approach develops with no increase in organic breeding, then organic farmers and growers will be cut off from sources of new varieties within the next few years.

Based on these general arguments, the Working Group agreed unanimously to form a sub-group on organic plant breeding.

A main activity of the sub-group is to organize a meeting on organic plant breeding. This will probably take place in December 1999 in The Netherlands. The organizers will be the Louis Bolk Institute (Edith Lammerts van Bueren).

A further activity of direct interest to members is the intention to organize a bid for a European research project in organic plant breeding for the Fifth Framework Programme (Prof. Jos van Damme, NL).