K. Skogs-o. Lantbr.akad. Tidskr. 142:28, 2003

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Kungl. Skogs- ochLantbruksakademiensÅrg. 143 • Nr 1 • År 2004

Ecosystem services in Europeanagriculture – theory and practice

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K. Skogs-o. Lantbr.akad. Tidskr. 142:28, 2003

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Ansvarig utgivare: Akademiens sekreterare och VD: Bruno NilssonRedaktör: Gunilla Agerlid

Ecosystem servicesin European agriculture– theory and practice

International conference in Falkenberg September 14-16 2003In cooperation with the Bertebos Foundation

Kungl. Skogs- och Lantbruksakademiens Tidskrift (KSLAT) 2004:1(Journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry)

Publisher: Bruno NilssonEditor: Gunilla AgerlidText, graphs & layout: Roger Olsson

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Table of contents

Preface (Bruno Nilsson) .................................................................................................3Ecosystem services – theory and practice (introduction and overwiew) ...........................5European farmer of tomorrow – a provider of services – interview with the Bertebos Prize winners .....................................................................7Multifunctionality and ecosystem services in European agriculture (John R Porter) ........9The art of mixing crops: multifunctionality at the farm level (Martin Wolfe) ................. 14Planning for multifunctional land use at the regional level (Pieter Vereijken) ................ 17Ecosystem services in an agricultural context (Johanna Björklund) ............................... 21Evaluation of ecosystem services – a theoretical approach (Torbjörn Rydberg) ............ 25Nutrient cycling in sustainable farming systems(Erik Steen Jensen) ............................... 29Nutrient recycling – a prerequisite for sustainability (Jakob Magid) ............................34Soil fertility in sustainable farming systems (Paul Mäder) .............................................37Agriculture’s interaction with the water cycle (Malin Falkenmark) ................................ 41Biological control and pollination in sustainable agriculture (Steve Wratten) ............... 45Integrated approaches to root disease management (Ariena van Bruggen) .................. 48Integrating sustainable farming with landscape development (Thomas van Elsen) ........ 52Recreation – an opportunity to engage with citizens (Urban Emanuelsson) .................. 54Developing agriculture through producer/consumer interactions (Thomas Harttung) ... 57The CAP and agricultral ecosystem services (Paul Campling) .......................................59A farmer’s view of ecosystem services (Peter Edling) ...................................................63The use and potential misuse of the concept of ecosystem services – a critical comment (Jacob Weiner) ...........................................................................66Awareness raising and interdisciplinary research – key issues for the future (Lennart Salomonsson, report from working groups) ............. 68

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obody would argue against the necessity of developing sustainableagriculture. But as usual there may be several pathways that lead to the goal.The 2003 Bertebos Conference explored one of them: the possibility ofdeveloping European agriculture into an ecosystem services provider. Indoing this the conference also dealt with one of the most crucial issues forour common future, namely the conditions and processes through whichnatural ecosystems and the species that make them up sustain and fulfilhuman life.

Things must change, and they will change as new knowledge emerges.This is of course true not only for agriculture. In order to reach sustainability,values, attitudes and ways of life will have to change at all levels from theindividual to the global. It is crucial to examine new knowledge and newinitiatives without prejudice, regardless of their origin. There is a need fornew concepts in agriculture and agricultural research and the only way tofind them is through free and open-minded discussions. The 2003 BertebosConference contributed to this process.

This was the fourth Bertebos Conference. Like the preceding ones it wasfacilitated by Brita and Olof Stenström through the Bertebos Foundation. TheAcademy would like to express its most sincere gratitude to the Stenströmfamily and the Foundation for this, but also for their trust in the Academy andfor their support of and belief in science as a tool for a better future.

Bruno Nilsson

Secretary General and Managing DirectorThe Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry

Preface

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Agricultural ecosystems provide three differenttypes of ecosystem services:• primary goods such as food, fibre and bio-

energy;• regulatory effects that ecosystems have on

biogeochemical, pest and disease cycles; and• subjective cultural services of landscape

aesthetics and diversity.There are a number of conceptual and prac-

tical problems in attempting to measure, estab-lish and manage ecosystem services. Keyquestions addressed by the conference were:• what can we identify as the ecosystem goods

and services in agro-ecosystems and what istheir value?

• what could be the practical application of thenotions of goods and services in Europeanfarming?

• what research is needed within the field ofagro-ecosystem goods and services?Multifunctional farming is a land use that

can expand the provision of agro-ecosystemgoods and services. In his Bertebos Prize lecture,Professor John Porter outlined a possible futureof a more multifunctional European agriculture,applying different strategies in order to improveits production of a wider array of ecosystemservices. Professor Martin Wolfe gave a numberof examples of multifunctional agriculture at thefarm level, while Professor Pieter Vereijkenpresented a model for planning multifunctionalland use on the regional level.

Agricultural practices have shaped the land-scape through time, therefore these practicesstrongly determine the kind and amount of serv-ices generated. The definition of these servicesfor natural ecosystems needs to be reinterpretedfor use in an agricultural context. Dr Johanna

Björklund discussed how the definition of eco-system services needs to be modified to beaccurate for agro-ecosystems. She also presenteda study of changes in the generation of eco-system services in the Swedish agricultural land-scape over the last 40 years.

To increase the awareness of agriculture’scontribution to generating ecosystem servicesand the potential for increasing its contribution,accurate methods for assessment have to be avail-able. In a theoretical approach to evaluation ofecosystem services, Dr Torbjörn Rydberg in-troduced the concept of ‘embodied energy’ or‘emergy’. The valuation of ecosystem serviceswas much discussed during the conference.

Reducing the dependence on external non-renewable resources is crucial for the sustainabledevelopment of agriculture. Skilful managementand sustainable use of locally generated eco-system services may be a way to maintain pre-sent production levels while reducing these in-puts. The conference looked at four examples ofservices for sustainable agriculture: nutrient cyc-ling, water, biological regulation and recreationand culture.

In his Bertebos Prize lecture, Professor ErikSteen Jensen discussed the nitrogen and phos-phorus cycles as examples of ecosystem serv-ices, focusing on the changes needed to over-come present problems and looking at organicfarming as a model providing a set of ethicalprinciples to guide the development of agri-culture in a sustainable direction. Dr JakobMagid discussed the necessity of closing therural-urban nutrient cycle. Dr Paul Mäder pre-sented studies comparing soil fertility in organicand conventional farming systems.

Professor Malin Falkenmark gave an over-

From a human perspective ecosystems provide goods and services,defined as the products and benefits that people derive from localand global ecosystems. The 2003 Bertebos Conference focused (froma European perspective) on the ecosystem that offers the largestpotential for humans to affect the provision of goods and services:the agro-ecosystem.

Ecosystem services in Europeanagriculture – theory and practice

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we tend to overestimate the scientific value ofspecies and biodiversity in this context. What ismost important for the majority of people is therecreational value of the landscape, not the spe-cific features of biodiversity or culture. None-theless, people spending time in the naturalenvironment for recreation will gain experiencesand knowledge that will increase their appre-ciation of its full range of values.

The role of markets and consumers as adriving force in the sustainable development ofagriculture was highlighted by company directorThomas Harttung. The rapidly growing Danishorganic farm company Aarstiderne today links100 organic farmers with some 40,000 house-holds.

Dr Paul Campling gave a brief overview ofthe foundation of the Common AgriculturalPolicy of the EU. Even if the concept of eco-system services is not yet recognised, multi-functionality in agriculture is a key issue fromEU point of view. The IRENA project is using aset of indicators to monitor to what extent thisintention is making any difference on the ground.

The conference was brought to a conclusionby two personal reflections on ecosystem serv-ices in agriculture. Dr Peter Edling expressedthe view that the concept of agriculture as anecosystem services provider fits very well withhis perception of his role as a farmer. In his con-cluding comment Professor Jacob Weiner saidthat even if there is a risk in assessing ecosystemservices using one single currency – money,energy, nitrogen or anything else – the conceptof ecosystem services is useful because it isquantitative, thus facilitating communicationwith policy makers and the public.

In thematic working groups, facilitated byProfessor Lennart Salomonsson, the confer-ence participants identified a number of keyissues for developing ecosystems services in agri-culture further. Awareness raising at all levels insociety, further interdisciplinary research anddeveloping methods for evaluating ecosystemservices are three such key issues.

view of agriculture’s interplay with the watercycle at global, regional and local levels, arguingthat any discussion on sustainable agriculturehas to take this aspect into account. Water con-straints will inevitably be a major obstacle infeeding the growing world population and thishas implications for European agriculture in yearsto come.

Professor Steve Wratten showed that simplepractical measures in the agricultural landscapecan greatly improve ecosystem services of bio-logical control and pollination. Professor Arienavan Bruggen highlighted the importance of themicrobial diversity in the soil by comparing bio-logical control of root diseases in organic andconventional farming systems.

Concerning recreational and cultural services,Professor Thomas van Elsen gave some exam-ples of how landscape development and natureconservation can be integrated into sustainableagriculture. Dr Urban Emanuelsson argued that

The history of the Berte Mill in southwesternSweden can be traced back to 1569, and ithas been owned and operated by the samefamily throughout the centuries. Today the millis part of the Stenström family enterprise, whichalso includes a farm and the SIA Company,manufacturing ice cream from organic dairyproducts.

The Bertebos Foundation was establishedin 1995 by Olof and Brita Stenström in orderto promote research, development and edu-cation within the food industry sector. Throughthe auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy ofAgriculture and Forestry (KSLA), the Founda-tion has established the prestigeous bi-annualBertebos Prize for “well renowned, ground-breaking research or development in the fieldof food processing, agriculture, animal healthor ecology”. A seminar, focused on the prizewinner´s field of research, is held in Falken-berg.

The 2003 Bertebos Prize was awarded totwo internationally recognized scientists inagro-ecology: Professor Erik Steen Jensen andProfessor John R Porter. Both gave their prizelectures at the 2003 Bertebos Conference.

This issue of the Journal of KSLA is the reportfrom the 2003 Bertebos Conference.

The Bertebos Foundation

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“European agriculture has been very successfulin producing food efficiently”, says ProfessorJensen. “However, during the last 50 years wehave seen a number of problems emerging fromthis high-intensity farming. We need to takeaction, we need to develop sustainable agricul-ture, but we still don’t know very much aboutwhat sustainability means in practice.”

“Change is inevitable. The economic drivingforces are much stronger than environmentaldemands”, Professor Porter adds. “With the tenaccession countries entering the EU the agri-cultural sector in western Europe will face greatcompetition. It will inevitably diminish and itmust change to survive.”

Agriculture – a dinosaur“The agricultural sector is like a dinosaur in aneconomy shifting into services. Turning to pro-duction of ecosystem services is a matter ofsurvival for the sector. Of course you can say thatwe will always need food, but there is more than

enough land for food production in Europe. Glob-ally, the situation is different.”

Professor Porter was awarded the BertebosPrize for his internationally renowned researchinto complex agro-ecosystems by biologicalmodelling of responses to their environment,and Professor Jensen for his pioneering researchin organic agriculture focused on plant product-ion and soil biology. The prize winners agreethat a shift from conventional to organic agri-culture is a first step along the path to sustain-ability.

“Organic agriculture is not the answer, it isa niche”, Professor Porter says. “I don’t thinkthat low-intensity production for local marketswill ever be able to challenge the large-scalefood industry. But it can serve as a source ofinspiration for change.”

“I think we should consider organic farmingas a perspective for European agriculture. Itgreatly influences the way we act, whether weconsider it as a niche or a perspective”, adds

European agriculture is facing the challenge of moving from a pro-duction function to a service function, but it will take even more thanthis to achieve sustainability. Professors John R Porter and Erik SteenJensen, Bertebos Prize winners 2003, outline a dramatic future forEuropean farmers.

European farmer of tomorrow– a provider of services

A matter of sur-vival. BertebosPrize winnersJohn R Porter (left)and Erik SteenJensen think newapproaches areurgently neededin European agri-culture andagriculturalresearch alike.

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professor Jensen. “Organic agriculture is basedon a set of principles that can also serve as guide-lines for the development of conventional agri-culture. But there are a number of problems inorganic agriculture that must be solved beforeit is really sustainable. One example is long-termmaintenance of the nutrient status of the soils,especially concerning phosphorus. To overcomethat problem we must close the nutrient cyclebetween agriculture and urban areas, bringinghuman waste back to the farmland. It will requirechanges in our attitudes as citizens to acceptfood grown on fields fertilised that way...”.

Attitudes and cultural values like this are oneof the obstacles for change that need to be over-come among consumers and farmers alike. How-ever, John Porter and Erik Steen Jensen stressthat farmers should not be blamed for the presentunsustainable agricultural system.

“If I was a farmer I would do the same thing”,Professor Porter says.

“Today’s farmers have been brought up withthe idea that it is all about producing food effici-ently”, Professor Jensen continues. “It will be amatter of generations before farmers look uponthemselves as ecosystem services providers.”

A matter of consumer attitudes“It is also a matter of consumer attitudes”, Pro-fessor Porter interposes. “We take for grantedthat some things are free, like water. It is notsomething you pay for until it comes out of atap”.

The conversation moves on to other hin-drances to change, like the Common Agricult-ural Policy (CAP) of the EU.

“I have no strong opinion on this”, ProfessorJensen starts, “but I can’t see that CAP is in anyway supporting development of a more sustain-able agriculture. My opinion is that the farmerswho produce with the least impact on the en-vironment should have the greatest support fromthe EU.”

Professor Porter is more outspoken:“Subsidies exceed the value of agricultural

production in EU by a factor of four. We spend90 billion Euro per year to support a system that,among other things, creates a lot of problems inthe Third World, which is one of the reasons whythe EU pays 250 billion Euro annually in aid toThird World countries. So for one thing, if we

did not pay the 90 billion, we would not have topay the 250. Also, the subsidies are capitalisedin the price of agricultural land and the highprice of land is the single most importantobstacle for change today. The average EUfarmer is 55 years old, but a new generationcannot take over because they cannot afford tobuy the land.”

New research approach neededEven if the need for change is obvious and evenif we know in which direction we have to move,the professors agree that there is a large know-ledge gap. To fill that gap, Professor Jensenadvocates a new approach in agricultural re-search.

“I think the incremental approach we usenow is unable to bring about the change needed”,he says. “We are starting from today’s conven-tional farming, trying to improve it in detailswhile maintaining high intensity. What we shoulddo is to set up goals or standards for a sustainableagricultural system and do research on how toachieve high production while meeting thesegoals.

“Any option in compliance with the goalsshould be considered. From my point of view,for example, the use of transgenic organisms inorganic farming should not be ruled out pro-vided it meets the goals and thus contributes toa more sustainable agricultural system. I can seeno problem in improving wheat varieties bytaking genes from wild relatives of wheat whenwe know the risks associated with the technol-ogy. However, I am against genetic engineeringacross species barriers, such as taking genesfrom a deep sea fish and transferring them intoa potato.”

“Agricultural scientists today are like phys-cists in the 1920s”, Professor Porter says. “Weare struggling for concepts. Ecosystem servicesis a new concept that could be a key to movingforward, but it needs to be developed. Amongother things we need a pricing system, some-thing like that which is now being developed forthe trade of greenhouse gas emission rights. Iwould definitely prefer a market driven system,rather than paying for ecosystem services throughthe tax bill.”

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Multifunctional farming is a land use that canexpand the provision of agro-ecosystem goodsand services. Here we will outline a possiblefuture of a more multifunctional European agri-culture, applying different strategies in order toimprove its production of a wider array of eco-system services.

Ecosystems provide us with air to breathe,ecosystems supply clean water, ecosystems re-cycle our waste. These and other unpaid-for eco-system services underpin the possibility forhumans to live on this planet. Ecosystemservices could be defined as the benefits thathumans derive from the functioning of local andglobal ecosystems. Without these services,derived from ecological life support systems,market economies could not exist.

There is a link between the notion of eco-system services and multifunctionality in farmingsystems. A multifunctional farming system pro-duces not only a variety of harvested compo-nents but also biogeochemical cycles within thefarming system (such as the cycling of carbon,nitrogen and other elements), pollination servicesand enhancement of biodiversity.

Within the framework of the UN MillenniumAssessment, four subgroups of ecosystem serv-ices have been identified:• goods, primarily food, but also fibre and bio-

mass for energy;

• regulating services, such as the fluxes of car-bon dioxide between the vegetation and theatmosphere which affect the regulation of theglobal climate system;

• supporting services, for example the decom-position of organic matter which is crucialin soil formation; and

• cultural services, non-material services suchas recreation, cultural and aesthetic values.In Europe (the present EU 15 countries and

the 10 accession countries) there are 378 millionhectares of ‘cultivated’ land, i.e. agricultural land,urban areas, roads and other infrastructure. Therest of the land area, 208 million hectares, isuncultivated, ‘natural’ land. Obviously ‘natural’land provides the ‘cultivated’ land with waterand air, helps with production of the soil and soon. But what we will look at here in particularis the feedback from the cultivated sector to the‘natural’and also the feedback within the agri-ecological sector itself.

It may seem strange to look upon agricultureas a provider of services. But in fact Europeanagricultural production already forms the basisof a service industry. Only about 25% of theenergy consumed in the EU food chain is agri-cultural production. The rest is consumed in serv-ices processing the food and bringing it to theconsumer. Of total employment in the food chain,half is in primary production and the other half

Multifunctionality and ecosystemservices in European agricultureIn his Bertebos Prize lecture Professor John Porter argues thatlooking at European agriculture not only as a producer of food butalso as a provider of a wide range of ecosystem services may give someguidance for the development of future sustainable agriculture.

Billion dollarecosystems. Someterrestrial eco-system values(billion US$).(From Costanzaet al, 1997)

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is in food processing, distribution and retailingservices.

The concept of environmental services ismoving towards the idea that nature has a ‘market’value that could be expressed in economic terms.This is of course an anthropocentric view ofnature, which is one but not the only reason whyit is a controversial approach. But there are alsobenefits, for example, it can serve as a means ofinterdisciplinary dialogue between ecologists,economists, philosophers and others.

Ecosystem services of a multi-functional agro-ecosystemAn example of qualitative assessments of theecosystem services of a multifunctional foodand energy-producing agro-ecosystem has beendeveloped in Denmark. The system was set upfor scientific purposes in 1995 and designed forcombined food, fodder and energy production.It is composed of organically managed croprotation fields, separated by 4-5-metre-high bio-mass hedges. One aim was that the system shouldbe energy neutral by producing as much renew-able biomass energy as is consumed in the foodand fodder part. Research has also been carriedout in other fields, such as the performance ofthe system in terms of carbon sequestration andthe support of insect populations for pollinationand pest control.

The services provided by the system are:• food and fodder as a provisioning service;

• biomass for energy as a provisioning service;

• soil erosion control (the hedges) and nutrientretention as regulatory services;

• carbon sequestration as a regulatory service(there is data showing that the system, overtime, will store carbon);

• biological control of pests as a regulatoryservice;

• increase of farmland biodiversity as a regu-latory and cultural service; and

• economic wellbeing of farmers as provision-ing and cultural services, even if this experi-mental system is too small to achieve this.

While the energy input to the system is about11 GJ ha-1, the output from the biomass hedgesis about 116 GJ ha-1. This means that the energybalance of the system shows a great positive net,but only in terms of primary energy. You haveto take into account that the input is to a largeextent a high-quality energy source (diesel fuel),while the output is a low-quality energy source(biomass).

The values of ecosystemsAn interesting question is how far CAP, e.g. thepresent EU area-support payments, reflects esti-

Services-areacurve. Servicevalue per hectareand area (millionhectares) of someterrestrial eco-systems.(Calculated fromCostanza et al)

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mations of the agro-ecosystem services. A star-ting point for analysing this could be a paperpublished in 1997 by Costanza and others inNature1 , trying to estimate the value of globalecosystem capital. The analysis is very contro-versial and has been criticised. For one thing, itmainly compares service values of different eco-systems, which means that it does not handlespatial scale very well. Planting an open fieldwith monoculture forest would increase the eco-system service value more than splitting the samearea into a mosaic system with different func-tions. Keeping this and other problems with themodel in mind, it could still be useful in devel-oping the concept of ecosystem services.

Small areas – high valuesThe bottom line of Costanza’s estimations is thatthe total value of the global ecosystem capitalis US$33 trillion (1012), which is almost doublethe global GNP. The capital is divided 65% and35% between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystemson an area basis. Figures for some terrestrialecosystem service values are given in the tableon p. 9. From the figures given in the paper youcan calculate that the provisioning of goods isabout 7% of the total services. This can be seenas the return of the global capital.

The Costanza calculations show that rareecosystems, covering relatively small areas, havevery high values per hectare, while spatially ex-tensive ecosystem have much lower values perhectare. This inverse relationship can be shown

in a services-area curve (top of previous page),which in turn offers an opportunity to link thefinancial return from agricultural production tothe value of agro-ecosystem services. To do thiswe will also need a fairly conventional model,used by landscape and agriculture economists,called the production-area model (below).

The next step is to try to combine the pro-duction-area model with the services-area modelderived from Costanza’s estimations into a pro-duction area-services model, as shown in thefigure on p. 12 (top). This combined model givesus, as before, the market-optimal area for pro-visioning services (or goods). But it also showsthat there is an extra optimal area for productionof other ecosystem services, defined by the pointwhere the marginal net return function cuts thearea-services function. This suggests that if wecan identify these extra ecosystem services, itwould be profitable to cultivate an additionalarea to provide these services.

Furthermore, if you use data from Costanzato estimate the agro-ecosystem services withinthe EU you end up with a grand total of about19 billion Euro for the EU 15, and another 5billion Euro for the ten accession countries (seetable p. 12, bottom). The annual societal transfersto the agricultural sector in the EU is about 85billion Euro, which means that the subsidiesoverestimates the ecosystem service value of thecurrent EU agriculture by a factor of four.

If that is the case, are there ways in which wecan improve the values of agro-ecosystem serv-

Production-areamodel. Marginalnet return per unitarea.

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ices? One way would be to integrate ecosystemservices within farming systems, e.g. improvebiotopes, which will have to happen on a localscale. The above-mentioned multi-functionalagricultural system could be seen as a small-scale example of this strategy. Another option isto separate services based on land productivity,in other words to return low-grade land to naturewhile cultivating productive areas more inten-sively. This should be done on a large scale. Thiscould certainly be an option for Europe, wherethere is definitely no shortage of agriculturalland.

These options can be illustrated in the pro-duction area-services model. Both options meanthat we try to move from right to left along thearea-services function line, i.e. from areas withlow production of services per unit to areas withhigher production per unit. If we are able to dothat, we are increasing the non-production servicevalue of the cultivation. The integration option,

where we cultivate some extra land in an en-vironmentally friendly way, could be illustratedby moving the production services-area to theright.

The separation strategy could be illustratedby introducing a low production alternative intothe production-area model (top, next page). Thisalternative will of course have a smaller marketoptimal area. Extended below the line, to lookat the non-market service, the low productionalternative gives an option to cross the servicefunction line at a point where the service valuesare higher.

It seems, in conclusion, that it is possible toincrease the service value of agro-ecosystemsboth by integration and separation. In practice,the choice of strategy must be region-specific,unlike the present EU one-size-fits-all policy.Furthermore, support for increasing the eco-system service value of European agricultureshould not be used as a means of justifying

Production-areaservices model.Dashed linesdefine the marketoptimal area foradditionalecosystemservices. Notethat values arepositive on bothsides of the x-axis.

Agro-ecosystemservice values(billion Euro) inthe EU 15 and the10 accessioncountries. (FAOproductionyearbook 2002after Costanza etal.)

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general subsidies and must be non-distorting ofglobal markets.

Suggestions for the futureFour areas of future interest can be pointed out:• scientific questions about ecosystem struc-

ture, function, scale and services;• agro-ecosystem services important in agri-

cultural education;• ecosystem services central to several inter-

national research programmes; and

High and lowproduction alter-natives. A lowproduction alterna-tive(S2) gives moreroom for ecosystemservice values.

• national and regional assessments of eco-system services for policy.The overall question for the future is, of

course, if ecosystem services and multifunction-ality is a framework for looking afresh at agri-culture’s role in society, do we have the research,do we have the economics and do we have thevision?

Professor John R PorterThe Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmarkjrp@kvl.dk

1. Costanza, R et. al., 1997: The value of the world’secosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387,253-60.

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We need farming systems to provide a varietyof goods and services such as healthy foods, usefulmaterials, improved soil, clean water and ruralculture. It is well known that the common agri-cultural policy (CAP) of the EU has not been ableto support such a multifunctional agriculture.While successful in promoting high productionof food, it has caused adverse effects such as:poor soil management; impacts on land-usepatterns; overstocking in some regions andunderstocking in others; monocultures; intensivegrassland management; together with the loss ofrare breeds, mixed farming systems, traditionalbuildings and habitats. These are just internaleffects; effects of the heavily subsidised exportsof food products to other parts of the world aremajor, negative, external aspects.

In 1968, only six years after the introductionof CAP, serious attempts were made to reform itbecause of the rapid increase in production. Likenumerous later attempts, this first one was not

successful. CAP reforms have consistentlytended to work around the margins of the needsmentioned initially, for example by improvinghedges or headlands, rather than by improvingthe ecosystem services of the agricultural sys-tems themselves.

To find real improvements in this sense weneed a new model and the issue here is to whatextent we can develop our ideas about agriculturefrom natural ecosystems. One of the modelsemerging at the moment is the work of DavidTilman’s group in Minnesota, looking at naturalplant communities and coming up with someremarkable figures on how such communitiescan perform. They have shown, for example, thata mix of 16 species grown together as a commu-nity can produce over 50% more than the same16 species grown separately as monocultures.The high diversity of the community ensures ahigh probability that there will be one or morehigh-performing species in place under any

The art of mixing crops: multi-functionality at the farm levelTurning from single crop agriculture to more complex multicropsystems is one way to increase multifunctionality in agriculture atthe farm level. Professor Martin Wolfe outlines a number of exam-ples of farm level multifunctional agriculture.

The paradigm shift. Some features of simple and complex agricultral systems.

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conditions. A high diversity system is simplymore consistent over a range of conditions.

One of the main mechanisms that operatesin complex systems is that an increase in thenumber of components means a wider range offunctions. Another effect is niche differentiation,which improves exploitation of the local environ-ment. There may also be complementation amongthe different components. These are generalitieswhich we can make use of in our agriculturalsystems, but to do this would mean a paradigmshift from simple to complex systems. Thecomplex system, as outlined in the figure on theopposite page, has many things in common withthe principles of organic farming, primarily theexclusion of synthetic inputs.

One example of moving towards a more com-plex system is a simple spatial change in thedistribution of crops, using a mixture of threewinter wheat varieties instead of growing themseparately. One effect is that the mixed crop isless affected by diseases than would be expectedif the three varieties were grown separately (seefigure above), which in turn improves crop stability(see figure p. 16). The same kind of disease re-duction effect by mixing varieties has been dem-onstrated for a number of species, includingcereals such as barley, oats and rice, other annualssuch as potato, soya and cotton, and perennialssuch as apple and willow. Furthermore, mixturescan be effective not only in terms of disease butalso for pest and weed suppression.

Intercropping is another possibility forcreating more complex systems. For example,growing carrots together with clover has provento be an efficient way to reduce infestations ofcarrot fly.

Going to an even higher level of interactionbrings us into agroforestry. There are many poss-ible advantages of integrating trees into agri-cultural systems. Trees provide, for example:• nutrient cycling;• shelter for soil, animals and humans;• water management;• carbon sequestration;• food for humans and domestic animals;• product biodiversity of importance for mar-

ket buffering on the local scale;• wildlife and landscape aesthetic value; and• reliable pension investment.

There are, of course, also disadvantages. Trees

compete with crops for light, water and otherresources. They also increase the managementinput of the system. The cost of establishment ishigh and it is a long time until they generate anyincome. Furthermore, trees in agricultural sys-tems tend to get in the way, although this can belargely avoided by developing alley-croppingsystems where modern machinery can work inbetween the tree lines. For example, Elm Farmhas tested a range of mixed standard and coppicesystems (hazel, willow) as north/south-orientedalleys spaced so as to allow a full organic rotationto be grown between the tree lines.

New demandson plant breedingIn turning from single crop systems to complexmixtures it is of course crucial to use not onlythe right mix of species, but also suitable varie-ties. Since today’s agricultural systems are basedon monoculture, most, if not all, varieties havebeen developed to perform well when grown thatway. A shift to mixed and inter-cropping alsodemands a change of priorities in plant breeding.The current approach to plant breeding is con-cerned with adaptation, producing varieties thatare adapted to local conditions, but there is verylittle adaptability in these varieties. However,Elm Farm is now working on composite crosspopulations (bulk populations) that can providenot only for high levels of adaptation, but at thesame time retain the potential for adaptabilitywithin the population.

Mixed crops persist. Observed occurence ofthree leaf diseases in a mix of three winter wheatvarietes, compared to the expected ocurrence ifthe three varietes had been grown separately.

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As shown here, there are promising resultsindicating that a shift towards more complexfarming systems could be beneficial. To moveforwards, we need to develop a ‘whole ecosystem’concept in which agriculture is just one compo-nent. We need to broaden the use of genetic di-versity to improve protection against biotic and

abiotic stress. We also need new and improvedways of exploiting functional biodiversity inagricultural systems. To make such a paradigmshift happen we also need policy changes: weneed a CAP that supports the development ofmore complex farming systems.

Mixed crops improve stability. Yield of three wheat varieties and a mix of all three varieties in foursubsequent years (2000-2003).

Professor Martin WolfeElm Farm Research Centre, UKelmfarm@efrc.com

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What we will look at here is multifunctionalityon a higher level than the single field or farmlevel and even higher than the level of agri-culture itself. We will look at the regional level,approaching the subject from a social point ofview, trying to give some options for supportingpolicy and research in this field.

At the moment there is an enormous transi-tion of rural areas in Europe to non-agrarian use,due to globalisation, increasing imports, lowerprices and increasing pressure from other typesof land use. We can foresee, or at least guess, thatthis trend will grow even stronger as the WorldTrade Organisaton (WTO) and others put pressureon the EU to reduce agricultural subsidies in thefuture.

One of the major driving forces in this transi-tion is a pressure on the local land market basi-cally linked to population density. On the otherhand there are two factors of resistance counter-acting this pressure. One is the resistance of thesingle farm on the international sale markets (i.e.the gross margin per farm) and the other is theresistance on the local land market (i.e. the grossmargin per hectare). By quantifying these factorsone can develop a model to map the expected rateof transition of the countryside from agrarian tononagrarian use. The figure below shows theoutcome of such an operation for the 500 com-munities of the Netherlands. In this case theagrarian resistance on the sale market has beenregarded as the most important factor and there-

Planning for multifunctionalland use at the regional levelThere is an enormous transition of rural areas in Europe to non-agrarian use. This development opens up an opportunity to use landfor more important purposes than producing an excess of food.Professor Pieter Vereijken presents a planning tool to guide andgovern this transition at the regional level.

A question ofland prices.Agrarian resis-tance on salemarket mappedfor the communi-ties in theNetherlands(gross margin/farm).

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fore weighted by a factor of three compared tothe other two factors. The map corresponds infact very well to the common view of the futuredevelopment of Dutch agriculture.

This development opens up an opportunityto use land for more important purposes thanproducing an excess of food. In industrialisedcountries today there is indeed a transition to avision of agricultural systems combining evermore rural functions, as illustrated in the figureabove. On the left is conventional farming, inte-grating just the two functions of food productionand work and income. The greater part of the EUsubsidies to agriculture is still supporting justthese two functions. As we move to the right,higher degrees of integration are illustrated, in-cluding increasing numbers of functions. The farright polygon illustrates a truly multifunctionalland use, including all major rural functions.

This cannot be obtained on the farm level.It requires a regional scale with a wide array offarms, rural products and services. It also re-quires local markets for services as well as initialsupport by authorities through cross complianceor direct payments for the services required.Multifunctionality on this level offers possibi-lities to combine sustainability and competitive-ness on a free world market and will also openopportunities for providers other than farmers.

There is a wide range of services of multi-functional land use and agriculture for domesticmarkets:• water retention for flood protection (control

of effects of global warming);

• biomass for electricity (control of causes ofglobal warming);

• conservation of drinking water;• management of landscape and nature;• environment and facilities for tourism and

recreation; and• environment and facilities for education and

soil care.Of all land-based services, food can be traded

on the world market while other services must beconsumed where they are produced, locally orregionally.

Planning for multifunctionalityLooking at policy options for the main ruralfunctions it is of course possible for multi-functional farming to provide all kinds of serv-ices: food production, landscape, climate andwater management as well as the recreational,educational and other social services. Anotheroption is to involve others, not just farmers, inproviding services other than food, for example,water authorities, nature conservancy organisa-tions and other NGOs, and service industries likethe tourist industry. The main difference betweenthese two options is linked to the fact that farmersown the land, which means that, as long as wetry to develop multifunctionality within the agri-cultural sector only, we do not have to addressthe issue of access to the land.

Looking at the region-specific options forfarmers (or more correctly landowners) we couldidentify three alternatives:• monofarmer, specialising in commodity prod-

From food production to multifunctionality. Transition to agricultural visions and systems combiningever more rural functions.

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uction for the world market, by intensific-ation and scaling up, thus producing ever lessnon-commodity services;

• multifarmer, maintaining, restoring or re-newing joint production, because commodi-ties are increasingly less rewarded and non-commodities increasingly more rewarded;and

• rural server, specialising in non-commodityoutput, because in combination they are morerewarding than commodity production.Considering the last alternative one should

not forget that three quarters of the EU economyis already a service economy. Shifting from produ-cing goods to producing services is probably thebest basis for economic sustainability for anyentrepreneur.

There are a couple of basic questions of policyand research to ask when dealing with multi-functional land use and agriculture. On the re-gional level, one such question is: what physicalopportunities are there for various rural func-tions and for combinations of functions andwhere? Equally important is the question of thesocial demand for various functions on the localmarket. At the farm level you have to make achoice between joint or separate production ofcommodity and non-commodity services anddefine optimal systems for multifarmers or ruralservice providers.

Let us look at an example: the region ofTwente in the eastern part of the Netherlands, anarea with 600,000 inhabitants. Here one can saythat rural development follows two differenttracks: one in areas close to urban areas andinfrastructure, and another in the areas outsidethis structure or network (see figure above).About 40% of the land has already been trans-formed from rural (green) to more or less urban(red) areas. The red zones are already moreheavily used for functions like housing, industry,shops and para-agricultural activities like liverystables and greenhouse production. The green,more open and quiet spaces in between are usedfor functions like landscape and water manage-ment, recreation and farming activities such asgrazing and outdoor horticulture.

This of course has implications when plan-ning for development of multifunctional land useor agriculture, in that the red areas should be usedfor activities that require buildings and so on,while the green areas should be maintained in astate where they can continue to produce greenservices. To achieve this, active policy measuresare needed, since the green functions, in eco-nomic terms, are much weaker.

Within the framework of the Twente pilotproject, geographical information systems havebeen used to develop a tool for planning andpolicy making called opportunity maps. The sys-

Dualistic ruralplanning. Physicalfeasability ofmultifunctionalland-use andmultifunctionalagriculture in theregion of Twente,the Netherlands.´Red’ functions arehousing, industryetc. ’Green’functions arerecreation,agriculture etc.

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tem works with two kinds of inputs and outputs.If the input is a function or a combination offunctions, the output will be information on thebest areas or zones for locating these functions.If the input is geographical, such as a specific

Opportunitymap.Suitability of’green’ spaces fornature-landscapeand agriculture.An example ofusing GIS-basedtools for physicalplanning. TwenteRegion, theNetherlands.

zone or area, the system will list the optimal useof that specific area in terms of functions. Thefigure above is an example of an opportunitymap from the system, which is available (inDutch) on the internet at www.dualis.wag-ur.nl.

Professor Pieter H. VereijkenWageningen University, The Netherlandspieterh.vereijken@wur.nl

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According to the most commonly used defi-nition, ecosystem services are “conditions andprocesses through which natural ecosystems andthe species that make them up sustain and fulfilhuman life”. This concept was developed byecologists in the area of ecological economics,with their point of departure being undisturbed‘natural’ ecosystems. In agriculture, speaking ofnatural systems does not make sense, as agri-cultural systems are by definition modified andmanaged by humans. Even if one may say thatsome parts of the system are not cultivated, theseparts are still more or less sustained by agri-cultural production. Agriculture may, forexample, be supplying food or shelter for organ-isms in these areas. Furthermore, it is difficultto distinguish who is performing an ecosystemservice in an agricultural system and who is not.A worm shuffling and mixing the soil, improv-ing structure and decomposition, certainly is,but what if a domesticated pig does a similarthing by rooting and manuring? Or if a farmerdoes the job with a spade?

Modifying the definitionObviously, the definition of ecosystem servicesneeds to be modified to be accurate in respectof agro-ecosystems.

Biodiversity is crucial for the production ofecosystem services. The kind and amount oforganisms present determines the kind andamount of ecosystem services generated by thebiological functions of the organisms. One mayalso consider biodiversity in itself as an eco-system service, maintaining genetic informationand building resilience. The character of thelandscape, for example its geological origin, thetopography and the climate, is of course decisive

for the species present, but the landscape is alsoperforming ecosystem services by itself and byinteracting with the living part of the system:maintaining a favourable local climate, main-taining soil fertility, contributing to the globalcycles of nutrients and so on.

So far the ‘natural’ ecosystem and the agro-ecosystem are similar. But to an agronomist it isobvious that present as well as historical land useshapes the landscape, thus forming the precon-ditions for biodiversity and eventually in itselfperforming ecosystem services. This is why thevision of farmers and the history of farms, as wellas agricultural policies, has to be part of the pic-ture when dealing with ecosystem services inagricultural systems.

Agricultural ecosystem services can be group-ed into three categories. A certain service may beplaced in two or even all three of these.• services that directly support agricultural

production, such as generating and main-taining fertile soils, maintaining a favourablemicroclimate and providing biotic regulationsuch as pollination, pest regulation and weedcompetition. Some of these may be evaluatedby calculating replacement costs;

• services that contribute directly to the qual-ity of life of humans, such as cultural, natu-ral and aesthetic values of the landscape.These services provide conditions for sub-sistence, health and recreation. They can beassessed by capturing peoples’ individual andcollective preferences or by using hedonicpricing in, for example, assessing transport-ation cost, land prices, taxes etc. There arealso other more qualitative methods for as-sessing human preferences and landscapequalities; and

Ecosystem services inan agricultural contextDr Johanna Björklund discusses how the definition of ecosystemservices needs to be modified to apply accurately to agro-ecosystemsand argues that the vision of farmers and the history of farms, aswell as agricultural policies, has to be part of the picture whendealing with ecosystem services in agricultural systems. She alsopresents a study of changes in the generation of ecosystem servicesin the Swedish agricultural landscape over the last 40 years.

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• services that contribute towards global life-supporting functions, for example seques-tering of greenhouse gases, maintenance ofbiogeochemical cycles, supply of fresh waterand regulation of climate. Such services wereeconomically assessed in the well known andhighly controversial paper by Costanza et al.in 1997. This has been followed by otherattempts using their data, most recently in aspecial issue of Ecological economics in2002, where, for example, Boumans andothers, mainly using replacement costs andsimulation models, estimated the value of allecosystem services to be 4.5 times the grossworld product (GWP). However, these studieslargely overlook the fact that these servicesare not substitutable and that they are self-organising, fine-tuned, totally interconnectedand complex.Most of the assessments mentioned above are

good attempts to evaluate the invisible basis forhuman life, although very incomplete. We mayobject to the idea of measuring life-supportingsystems in monetary terms, but it is probablynecessary. In fact, we implicitly do this kind ofassessment all the time, as individuals and insocieties, by our everyday choices and actions.Agriculture is of course no exception. Thereforeit is certainly a challenge to assess the contri-

bution of different agricultural production modesto ecosystem services. To be able to do that weneed to modify the methods available formeasurement and assessment and even developnew ones.

Ecosystem services in theSwedish agricultural landscapeAn initial attempt to assess the generation ofecosystem services in the Swedish agriculturallandscape in relation to different productionmodes was made in 1999, comparing the agri-cultural system of 1950 with that of the 1990s.Available data on the country scale was reviewedwith the objective of elucidating the trade-offbetween generation of ecosystem services andintensity of production of food and the use ofexternal inputs. 1950 was chosen as a startingpoint because it can be considered to reflect thesituation before the large-scale introduction offossil-fuel-based input that made possible thehuge increase in yields later on.

The objective of the study was to identify po-tential services and to make a quantitative esti-mation for the two periods. Some results are pre-sented in the table on the opposite page.

The ecosystem service of capturing solar en-ergy was estimated as the total net primary pro-duction (NPP) of the landscape. As can be seen

Factors forming the preconditions for ecosystem services in agricultural systems.

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from the table, it was about 20% higher in the1990s than in the 1950s. However, the direct andindirect use of energy inputs into production in-creased threefold during the period. If this energyhad been generated by biomass rather than oil,additional areas of energy crops would have beenneeded to make the system energy self-sufficient.Taking this into account, the increase in netphotosynthetic capacity would essentially dis-appear.

The reduction of soil organic carbon is mainlydue to a drastic decline in organic matter in culti-vated organic soils, even though a reduction inmineral soils under intensive cereal productionhas also taken place. Impaired soil structure, theother assessment related to soil fertility, has beenestimated to reduce the potential yields in min-eral soil in southern Sweden by 10% to 20% dueto compaction by heavy machinery and dimin-ished organic matter content.

To capture the ecosystem service of nutrientsupply the use of this service was assessed. Evi-dently it has decreased: in the 1950s for every kgof nitrogen in harvest, 0.4 kg N was applied asfertiliser, compared with 0.9 kg N in the 1990s.This means that by the 1990s the ecosystem serv-

ice of nitrogen mineralisation/fixation in soilswas hardly used at all, even though the datacannot show whether it has actually deterioratedor not.

Data from agricultural areas in Poland andthe UK was used to evaluate biotic regulation.There are studies showing 60% losses of man-aged and wild pollinators and 75% fewer in-vertebrates in regions with industrial agriculture.The losses are caused by interrelated processes,including the destruction of habitats by alteringthe mosaic structure of the landscape and directpoisoning by insecticides. However, the figurescannot be used to draw any safe conclusionsabout the performance of the actual service sincethey are just indirect assessments.

The generation of clean water was assessedusing indirect measurement, such as the poten-tial risk of pesticide residues in surface water,which was calculated from the extent of theapplication of pesticides. The potential risk hasincreased from 3% to 23%. Today, pesticideresidues are found throughout the year in streamsin agricultural areas, but of course most fre-quently and in highest concentrations during thespraying season.

Fifty years of change. Assessments of quantitative changes of some ecosystem services in Sweden´sagricultural system between 1950 and the 1990s.

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The assessment of the second type of eco-system services, those contributing to the humanquality of life, need much further examination.In this study, the change in ecological carryingcapacity was assessed as an essential prerequisitefor the generation of these services. One mayregard this as an attempt to quantify landscapequality. Data for this part of the study is mainlyfrom the work of Professor Margareta Ihse.

The third type of ecosystem services, thosecontributing to global life-support functions, maybe the most important to assess, but they are alsothe most difficult. As can be seen in the table,sufficient data was available to facilitate esti-mates of two kinds of such services, the first be-ing the maintenance of biological and genetic in-formation. Of all species that have gone extinctin the agricultural landscape since 1850, about60% have done so during the time period underconsideration. Moreover, it has been estimatedthat between 40% and 45% of endangered floraand fauna species in Sweden are to be found inthe agricultural landscape.

Emission of greenhouse gases could be seenas related to the ecosystem service of global gasregulation. Over the time period, emissions havedecreased by 22%, mainly due to a near 50%

reduction of the area of peat soils under cultiva-tion. These soils have also been under cultivationfor a long time and therefore probably havelower carbon dioxide fluxes now than in the1950s. Also, the stocks of cattle are smaller to-day than 40 years ago, resulting in a decrease inmethane discharge. Other developments havepartly countered these effects, for example theincrease in emission of nitrous oxide as a resultof increased use of fertilisers. The same is truefor carbon dioxide emissions due to the use offossil fuels.

In conclusion, the study reveals that manyessential ecosystem services are compromised inthe agricultural landscape of today, though it isfully admitted that there is a lot more in the con-cept than can be captured by reviewing publisheddata on a country scale. Continuous work onassessment of ecosystem services and on how tointegrate their generation into modern agri-culture is urgently needed. Three important argu-ments for this are that:• it provides incentives to maintain and increase

biodiversity, as the species that build biodi-versity are the performers of many eco-system services;

• ecosystem services are production tools andmay be used to reduce the need for externalresources. There are ethical, ecological andeconomic reasons for the need for such re-ductions; and

• skilful management of production support-ing ecosystem services may give options formultifunctionality, in that it supports otherkinds of enterprises related to the local land-scape.

Dr Johanna Björklund, Centre for Sustainable AgricultureSwedish University of Agricultural Sciencesjohanna.bjorklund@cul.slu.se

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Decision-making on resource conservation andenvironmental management often becomes anissue of trade-offs between human demands onresources and the loss of ecological functionscaused by human resource extraction. The prob-lem is that there are no common criteria for evalua-tion of benefits and impacts. Societal benefitsare measured as economic growth, number ofjobs generated, quantity of food produced etc.,while ecological functions or qualities are ex-pressed in terms like grammes of carbon inprimary production or biodiversity. Because ofthis incompatibility there is a risk that the valuesand contributions of ecosystems are not fullyrecognised in decision-making, which in turnopens the way for over-exploitation, pollutionand other forms of environmental destruction.

Emergy synthesis– an evaluation toolEmergy synthesis is an evaluation tool offering apossibility to overcome this problem. Intro-duced by H.T. Odum, the method has beenunder development for the last three decadesand is still under development. Emergy can beinterpreted as ‘embodied energy’, the emergyvalue of a product being the amount of energyused in its creation. While traditional cost-benefit analysis considers nature as an extern-ality that can be used for free, emergy expressesvalues of the work of humans and nature on acommon basis, using energy as a measure. Eco-nomic valuation assigns value according toutility, i.e. what one gets out of something, anduses willingness to pay as its only measure. Theemergy concept includes an opposing view: themore energy, time and materials invested insomething, the greater its value.

Before looking further into emergy it may behelpful to outline some aspects of general system

principles and thermodynamics, as they form thebasis for the emergy concept.Common to all living systems is the develop-ment of storage and structure through transform-ations of energy and circulation of materials.Living systems are thermodynamically open(i.e. there is input and output of energy) butorganisationally closed. They organise cyclicallyto external resource oscillations and internaldesign constraints, but retain characteristicsnecessary for self-renewal and adaptation.

The concept of self-organisation provides aframework for understanding how systems utiliseincoming energy (and other resources) to developnew organisational states over time. The parts ofany system, living or non-living, developstructure and functions through self-organi-sation. The flows and processes of the system areinterlinked through multiple feedback loops.Feedback within the system, as well as from itscontext, is required for its maintenance, adjust-ment and evolution.

The further away from thermodynamic equi-librium the structure is, the greater is the com-plexity. Let us look, for example, at a cow eatinggrass. The grass is an ordered structure, beingused as a resource for a structure of higher order(the cow’s metabolism), while at the same timeorder is dissipated through the generation ofheat. In other words, order is generated from lessordered energies, while the overall entropy keepsincreasing in accordance with the second law ofthermodynamics.

Energy flowin self-organising systemsIn self-organising processes two basic designscan develop. The figure on p. 26 shows one linearand one autocatalytic pathway (using energycircuit language). There is a limited but steady

Evaluation of ecosystem services - a theoretical approachTo increase the awareness of agriculture’s contribution to generatingecosystem services and the potential for increasing its contribution,accurate methods for assessment have to be available. In a theoreticalapproach to the evaluation of ecosystem services, Dr TorbjörnRydberg introduces the concept of ‘embodied energy’ or ‘emergy’.

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flow of energy from an external source. In thelinear pathway the energy disperses its potentialin a simple diffusion process. Part of the energyinput becomes unavailable according to thesecond law of thermodynamics. The dispersal tothe environment is represented by the heat sinkpathway at the bottom. The second pathway,parallel to the simple one, is an autocatalyticconfiguration competing with the linearpathway for the same resource, the incomingenergy. The combination of energy transform-ation, storage and feedback to interact with thesource flow reinforces and increases the powerflow through the system. If the energy supply isbig enough to support growth of the auto-catalytic system, countering the depreciationinherent in its storage, the system will be ableto take the energy away from the linear pathway.

This basic energy system model representssystems at all scales of size and time. All organ-isms, including of course humans, are auto-

catalytic systems or units. They use energy tomake themselves able to utilise more energy.Non-living systems, like for example a city, canalso be seen as an autocatalytic unit. The citydoes not receive energy passively, but investssome of the energy input into capturing moreenergy from the source.

Systems that self-organise to develop the mostuseful work with inflowing energy resources, byreinforcing reproductive processes and over-coming limitations through system organisation,will prevail in competition with others. This‘principle of maximum power’, suggested byLotka in 1922, is a fundamental theoretical con-cept underlying emergy synthesis. Taking differ-ences in energy quality into account, Odumlater modified the principle (renaming it ‘themaximum empower principle’): at all scales,systems prevail through system organisation thatfirst develops the most useful work with inflow-ing energy sources, by reinforcing productive

The pathwaysof energy. Thetwo flows ofenergy - onelinear and oneautocatalytic - ina self-organisingsystem.

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processes and overcoming limitations, and sec-ondly increases efficiency of useful work.

Energy hierarchiesGeological processes, atmospheric systems, eco-systems and societies are connected, exchangingenergy and materials with each other, interactingthrough feedback mechanisms to self-organisein space, time and connectivity. While processesof energy transformation throughout the geo-biosphere build order, cycle materials, sustaininformation and degrade in the process, theyorganise units in an energy hierarchy.

When many units of one type are combinedto form fewer units of another, the relationship ishierarchical. Since there is energy in every-thing, including information, and since there areenergy transformations in all processes, most ifnot all things form hierarchies. The scale ofspace and time increases along the series ofenergy transformations.

Once it was recognised that the hierarchy of

energy transformation networks is general to allsystems, because of the common process of self-organisation, traditional definitions equatingwork and energy had to be revised. Availableenergy of one kind at one level in an energyhierarchy could no longer be seen as equivalentto that at another level. Odum redefined work as‘an energy transformation’, converting inputenergy to a new form of concentration, capableof feedback reinforcement. Work increases theutility of energy while degrading and dispersingpart of that energy.

Convergence of energy through a series ofenergy transformations yields a final product,which carries less energy than invested to powerthe chain of transformations. This is due to theentropic degradation. However, the higher posi-tion of the item in the energy hierarchy makes itmore valuable, as a large convergence of re-sources was required to support the process. Wemay say that the final product has a higher qualitythan the initial input in the transformation chain.

form of heat is released into the surroundings.Calculations of emergy flow and transformitiesare shown in the table below.

As the available energy entering the systemis used, it is transformed into a new form at eachstep. The transformity increases along the path-

Emergyanalysis- a simpleexampleIn this simple example of emergyand transformity analysis, a sealedaquarium receives a daily solarenergy inflow of 2,000 J. The fishis fed from the plant at 2 J/dayand material is recycled back witha flow of 0.002 J/day. 2,000 J in

ways and is highest in the feedback of thenutrients. The emergy flow is the same for allpathways and ends as the last of the availabe

energy feeds backinto the system.

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This finally brings us back to the emergy con-cept, since emergy corresponds to ‘quality’ in thissense.

Emergy and transformityEmergy accounts for and measures quality differ-ences between different forms of energy. Emer-gy express all the energy used in the work pro-cesses to generate a product or service in unitsof one type of energy. Another way to put it isthat the emergy value of a product is the amountof energy that was used in producing it. Accord-ing to a more formal definition, emergy is theamount of energy in one form (usually solar)that is required, directly and indirectly, toprovide a given flow or storage of energy ormatter. The unit used to express emergy valuesis the emjoule. When using solar energy as agauge the unit will be the solar emjoule.

The emergy driving a process can be seen asa measurement of the self-organising activity ofthe surrounding environment, converged to makethe process possible. It values the environmentalwork necessary to provide a given resource, beit the foliage of a tree or the oxygen stock in theatmosphere.

A unit closely linked to emergy is trans-formity: the energy of one kind needed to gener-ate one unit of energy of another kind. Trans-formity can also be defined as the ratio of emergyrequired to make a product to the energy of theproduct. The unit used to express transformitywill be solar emjoule per Joule (sej/J).

Emergy evaluations have been applied to awide variety of ecosystems, watersheds, agri-cultural systems, nations, alternative technolo-gies and other systems. The list of transformitiespresented in the table above has been extractedfrom some of the hundreds of papers publishedin this field so far.

Emergy evaluations of ecosystem servicesfrom agricultural landscapes are still lacking. Butas emphasised here, the theoretical basis for sys-tems ecology and emergy synthesis offers anopportunity to increase our knowledge aboutecosystem services. We need a solid theoreticalscientific ground for the evaluation of ecosystemservices in order to find a good fit between our-selves and the environment.

Dr Torbjörn Rydberg, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture,Swedish University of Agricultural Sciencestorbjorn.rydberg@evp.slu.se

Energy price tags.Typical solar transformities of some products, resources and information.

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Nutrient cycling can be defined as “the back-and-forth movement of nutrients between theliving and non-living components of the bio-sphere”. Here we will look at nitrogen and phos-phorus as two examples of nutrient cycles.

Nitrogen has a large reservoir in the atmos-phere. There are several pools and a lot of pro-cesses involved in the cycle, most of them drivenby carbon. Phosphorus has most of its reservoirin the soil and within sediments. The exchangewith the atmosphere is not nearly as extensive asis the case with nitrogen.

Nutrient cycles can be studied on differentscales:

• the field level, with input of fertilisers, bio-logical nitrogen fixation and atmosphericdeposition, and outputs like plant products,leaching to the ground water and gaseouslosses;

• the farm level, where a new input in theform of feed for the animals occurs. In gen-eral, introducing animals into the cycle willmean a considerable increase in the nutrientflow;

• the catchment level, where the nutrient cycleof the farm will be linked to the cycles of thelocal ecosystems and maybe also to neigh-bouring urban areas;

• the regional level. In Denmark, for example,there is a concentration of animal productionin Jutland, while farming in Sealand is mainlycrops. This creates a regional imbalance inthe nutrient cycles. There are many more ex-amples of such regional imbalances in Euro-pe, with a concentration of animal produc-tion in certain areas. In terms of nutrient cyc-ling, it is a challenge to overcome the prob-lems created by these imbalances; and

• the global level. One example is the Danishimport of soy beans, mainly from the US, foranimal fodder and the export of Danish porkto Japan, Germany, the UK and other coun-tries. This global trade represents an enor-mous flow of nutrients, which one has tokeep in mind when looking at nutrient cyclesat the local level (see figure on p. 30).

Nutrient cyclingas ecosystem servicesThere are several processes in nutrient cycles thatcould be seen as ecosystem services, forexample:• release of nutrients by decomposition and

mineralisation of organic matter;• solubilisation of minerals to supply plants and

micro organisms;• fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere by

micro organisms, partly in symbiosis withplants;

• immobilisation of nutrients during microbialdecomposition of organic matter, of impor-tance for waste management and soil form-ation; and

• denitrification in wetlands.A very rough calculation on mineralisation

and biological fixation of nitrogen in Danishfarmland indicates that the value of these twoecosystem services is about one billion DanishKroner (DKK) per year. This almost equals thetotal value of N fertiliser in Danish agriculture,which was 1.1 billion DKK in 1999. The calcu-lation is based on the current price of fertiliserof 4 DKK/kg N and the estimation that net nitro-gen mineralisation is on average 80 kg N/ha.

We are all aware that agriculture and agricul-tural science have been extremely successful in

Nutrient cyclingin sustainable farming systemsIn his Bertebos Prize lecture, Professor Erik Steen Jensen discussesthe nitrogen and phosphorus cycles as examples of ecosystem services,focusing on the changes needed to overcome present problems andlooking at organic farming as a model providing a set of ethical prin-ciples to guide the development of agriculture in a sustainabledirection.

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increasing production during the last half cen-tury. The total amount of food produced in theworld almost doubled from 1960 to the late 1990s.One reason for this of course is a heavily increasedinput of resources: the input of nitrogen has in-creased by almost a factor of seven and the inputof phosphorus by a factor of 3.5.

Fertilisers in theglobal nitrogen flowThe industrial synthesis of nitrogen fertiliser isabout 80 million tonnes of nitrogen annually. Asshown in the figure on the opposite page, thisis a considerable proportion of the total globalinput of nitrogen from the atmosphere intoterrestrial ecosystems. There are also a numberof other processes in agriculture and humansociety that cause big flows of nitrogen in thesame direction, for example the burning of fossilfuels and the symbiotic fixation of atmosphericnitrogen in crops. All in all, human activitiesaccount for 210 million tonnes of nitrogen en-tering terrestrial ecosystems from the atmosphereevery year. This can be compared to the nitrogenflow from natural sources, mainly nitrogen fixa-tion in natural ecosystems, which is muchsmaller: about 140 million tonnes per year. Ofcourse, this huge, human-induced nitrogen loadaffects terrestrial ecosystems in many ways.

In Danish agriculture the input of nitrogenboth via fertilisers and animal feed has increasedfivefold per hectare of farmland over the last 50years. In 1999, 46% of the total input of nitrogen

was fertiliser and another 38% was imported feedfor animal production. Of the total input, 20% isoutput as animal products and 12% as plantproducts. So only 32% of the total nitrogen inputis utilised, the other 68% being lost mainlythrough leaching from soils and ammonia vola-tilisation from manure. Per hectare of farmland,the nitrogen surplus has increased from an aver-age of 83 kg in 1950 to about 145 kg today, in spiteof the fact that the efficiency in nitrogen utilisa-tion has increased from 19% to about 33% in thesame period. We are all aware of the environ-mental problems caused by this nitrogen leachingin our part of the world.

Let us look at Sweden for an example of thesame development concerning phosphorus. Ofthe total input into the Swedish agriculturalsystem, 52% comes from fertilisers and another39% from imports of animal feed. Atmosphericdeposition and organic waste make up the re-maining 9%. Of the total input, 63% is utilisedin the products, leaving a surplus of 37% or11,000 tonnes per year. However, there is afundamental difference between the phosphoruscycle and the nitrogen cycle which must be con-sidered here: most of the surplus of phosphoruswill remain in the agricultural system, because itis stored in the soil. Nevertheless, there is a limitto this capacity for storing phosphorus. Today,Danish agricultural soils contain criticalamounts of inorganic phosphorus, meaningmore than 25% in excess of fixation capacity,which in turn causes environmentally critical

Global nitrogenflow. Global traderepresents anenormous flow ofnutrients. Den-mark imports soybeans (mainlyfrom the US) forpig fodder andexports pork. 25%of the exports goto Japan.

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phosphorus concentrations in the soil solution.Through macropore flow or surface transportthis phosphorus can reach aquatic ecosystemsrapidly and cause disturbances.

Today the stock of phosphorus in many soilsin Denmark could support crops without yielddepression for 15 or 20 years without any furtherfertilisation. We have been aware for a long timeof the fact that we add much more phosphorusthan is actually needed, and of the environmen-tal risk of doing so. Nevertheless, phosphorusfertilisation from inorganic fertiliser and animalmanure has decreased only marginally over thelast 20 years.

Too much of a good thingAll in all, the cycles of nitrogen and phosphorusin today’s Danish (and Swedish) agriculture area matter of ‘too much of a good thing’. Nitrateand phosphorus leaching to surface and groundwater is causing pollution, eutrophication andacidification. Reactive release of nitrogen intothe atmosphere causes eutrophication of naturalecosystems and contributes to global green-house gas accumulation and to stratosphericozone depletion. High nitrogen loads reducethe bio-diversity of natural ecosystems. Nitrogenoxides affect human health.

Considering the imbalances in fundamentalbiogeochemical processes outlined above, onemay of course ask what actions are taken todevelop a more sustainable agriculture?

The Danish scientist Klaus Illum has saidthat sustainability is about “knowledge about andrespect for the nature of which we are an integralpart”. According to Illum, sustainable develop-ment is about:• the way we act on the small and large scale;

• the technological choices we make; and

• showing consideration for the ecologicalsys-tems of which we are an integrated part.Concerning the last point, it should be

stressed that humans must be considered as partof agro-ecosystems.

Furthermore, it should be emphasised thatsustainable development is something more thanapplying the policies and technologies that wereon the environmental agenda long before sus-tainability entered our vocabulary: combatingpollution, reducing waste, substituting hazard-ous compounds and so on. With E. F. Schu-macher, one could say that sustainability is “alifestyle designed for permanence”.

When it comes to agriculture, we need a frame-work or a model to operationalise sustainability.Although not complete, organic farming is sucha model. Moving from present mainstream con-ventional farming to organic farming is a steptowards sustainability, but more far-reachingchange will be needed to move from today’sorganic farming to sustainable agriculture. Still,organic farming provides a set of ethical prin-ciples to guide us in the many, and often difficult,

Fertilisers make adifference. Globalannual inputs ofnitrogen from theatmosphere intoterrestrial eco-systems (milliontonnes).

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decisions we will have to make on how to de-velop agriculture in a sustainable direction:• the recycling principle: recycling and use of

renewable resources. Versatility in produc-tion;

• the precautionary principle: known and well-functioning technologies are better than riskytechnologies. It is better to prevent damagethan to depend on our ability to cure thedamage; and

• the nearness principle: transparency and co-operation in food production can be im-proved by nearness. Direct contact betweenproducer and citizen is beneficial.As an example of the outcome when applying

these principles one can look at some aims oforganic agriculture related to the topic discussedhere: nutrient cycling. Of course, organic farmingshares the most basic goal with other farmingsystems: to produce food of high quality in suffi-cient quantity. It strives to do this while encour-aging and enhancing biological cycles within thefarming system, involving micro-organisms, soilflora and fauna, plants and animals. Further-more, it aims to maintain and increase long-termfertility of soils and promote the healthy use andproper care of water and water resources. Theproduction should, as far as possible, use renew-able resources in local production systems. Aharmonious balance should be created betweencrop production and animal husbandry. All formsof pollution should be minimised. These goals aredefined by the International Federation of Or-ganic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).

There is a point in looking at principles and

aims, not at rules. Rules can, and indeed should,change over time with increasing knowledge andimprovements in practice and technologies.

If we look at the requirements regarding nu-trient cycling in future sustainable farming sys-tems, and for that matter societies, we will ofcourse have to go a bit further than outlinedabove. First, such a system must ensure the capa-city of soils to supply nutrients in the long term.There must, in other words, be a balance betweeninput and output. Secondly, the leaks in the nu-trient cycles must be sealed. Thirdly, Europeansmust consider their diet.

Sealing the leaksTo seal the leaks, intensity in production mustdecrease and one way to do this is by switchingto organic farming. With regard to decreasingintensity, it should be stressed that farmers mustbe able to make a living. They must be compen-sated for production losses by measures taken toreduce intensity in future agriculture.

But even if lower intensity is the key, thereare also other measures that can be taken. One isto improve synchronisation of nutrient avail-ability and demand. There has been a lot of re-search in this field but the knowledge gained hasnot been able to affect the dominance of mono-culture cropping. Synchronising supply anddemand of nutrients requires agro-ecosystemscomposed of mixtures of species of various lifeforms. Permanent plant cover, using for exampleperennial crops, autumn established crops or covercrops is another way to minimise leaks. Reducedfertilisation and precision fertilisation are pro-

Lower intensity,less leakage.Example of massbalances fornitrogen inDanish dairyproduction fromone conventionaland one organicfarm.

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bably measures that will be taken in organic aswell as conventional farming in the future. Re-cycling of crop residues is important for fertilitybut could also be used to increase immobility ofnitrogen in the autumn. Minimal and timely soiltillage can reduce the mineralisation of soilnitrogen in the autumn. Finally, increasing bio-diversity, through under-sown crops, intercropsor agroforestry, utilises nitrogen sources moreefficiently. However, any mix of crops does notnecessarily increase the uptake of soil nitrogen.

Concerning our diet, it is well known that therequired nitrogen input for producing animalprotein is much higher than for producing vege-table protein. Typical figures are 21 kg N/kg ani-mal protein and 3 kg N/kg vegetable protein. InEurope, 72% of our protein intake is animalprotein and only 28% is vegetable protein. Evena modest change in our diet, say to 50% of eachkind of protein, would dramatically reduce therequired input of nitrogen in food productionand thus help in solving the problems that havebeen discussed here.

Sustainabilityon the research agendaA starting point for future research on sustain-ability in agriculture could be to set up specificgoals, for example the ‘Factor 4’ principle fornutrients. This would mean reducing the inputof nitrogen by half and using it twice as effi-ciently as at present. This approach, starting fromspecific goals and trying to develop systems andmethods to meet these goals, is fundamentallydifferent from the predominant incrementalapproach used today, where we try to developconventional farming towards sustainability ona step-by-step basis. Taking the principles oforganic farming as a starting point, as sug-gested above, would be to take sustainability asa starting point.

There is a tremendous amount of research onnutrient cycling in agriculture. Rather than fur-ther research in this field, there is a need to ag-gregate this knowledge and to communicate itmore efficiently to farmers. There is also a needfor incentives to change attitude, not only amongfarmers but also among the public, for exampleto eat more vegetables and less meat. It is, finally,the responsibility of everybody to consider themoral aspects of our way of treating our envi-ronment. Scientists should pursue a discussionon the ‘tragedy of the commons’, that is thedifficulty of protecting common resources suchas water and air from pollution from single unitsthat pollute to obtain an individual, short-termand mostly economic gain.

Professor Erik Steen JensenRoyal Veterinarian and Agricultural University, Denmarkerik.s.jensen@risoe.dk

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In the industrialised world, waste managementsystems were originally designed to ensure ahigh local hygiene standard. They have beendeveloped to maturity without primary concernfor recycling. The material flows are basicallylinear; the flows of nutrients and water are notclosed. Our cities tend to be organised like giantmixing machines. There is an input of goods andmaterials of all kinds, eventually leaving as amix of waste, partly in solid form and partlythrough the waste water system.

A fundamental and simple prerequisite forsustainable development is that cities of the futuremust control their metabolisms to an extent whererecycling of waste products is near complete.The urgency of this becomes even more evidentwhen considering that today half the globalpopulation lives in urban areas compared to just3% in the middle of the 19th century. Within 30years probably two thirds of the world popu-lation will live in cities.

Future waste managementAn average European today produces 60-65 m3

of waste every year, including the water used forbathing and washing. Out of this, 0.45 m3 is urine,0.06 m3 is faeces and 0.16 m3 is organic house-hold waste. Thus 85-90% of the nutrients andmuch of the organic matter is contained in about1% of the total waste volume. Future wastemanagement systems could be based on a sepa-rate handling of these fractions, avoiding theneed to purify sewage effluent with regard tonutrient content and returning the nutrients toland-based production systems. A very simplepiece of technology to facilitate this is the urine-separating toilet which is already available.

The figure on the next page shows the distri-bution of nitrogen from households with the pre-sent system and the way it could be improved ina future separating system. Out of the daily out-

put of 15.7 g of nitrogen, 12 g could be utilisedas fertilisers for agricultural land, and the emis-sions of nitrogen into the atmosphere and the seacould be brought down almost to zero. A systemfor achieving this could be based on urine sepa-ration and dry composting of faeces and organicwaste in households. The urine could be useddirectly for fertilising, while the compost couldbe used for non-food production or even burnt.

Risk factorsThere are some risk factors in such a system thatneed to be considered, primarily contami-nation with unwanted substances and micro-organisms. However, as can be seen in the tableon p. 36 the concentrations of a number of heavymetals and xenobiotics in human urine fromseparating systems in Danish grassroots pro-jects are normally hundreds or even a thousandtimes lower than in municipal compost orsludge. Faecal contamination and microbial die-off have been studied in tanks containing urinecollected from separating toilet systems in urbanecology demonstration projects. The concen-tration of faecal bacteria decreased very rapidlyduring storage and was usually below the de-tection limit (<10 per ml) following three or fourmonths of storage. Comparitive analyses of pigand cattle slurry used for fertilisation in agri-culture showed in general much higher con-centrations of bacterial indicators and parasitesthan were found in human urine. This indicatesthat urine may be used as fertiliser in agriculturewith little if any additional risk compared withanimal slurry.

This question can also be addressed in termsof risk management. We can choose to conveyour waste to the water like we do today, or to thesoil. We know that the microbial biodiversity inone cubic metre of top soil is commonly greaterthan in one cubic kilometre of fresh water or

Nutrient recycling - a prerequisite for sustainabilityDr Jakob Magid argues the necessity of closing the rural-urbannutrient cycle. One way of achieving this could be based on urine sepa-ration and dry composting of faeces and organic waste from urbanhouseholds.

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sea water. So, if the waste contains somethingthat we do not like, as for example residues ofmedicines, you might ask where it should beplaced: in the soil or in lakes or coastal seas?Where is it most likely to be decomposed?

Today we are already having problems withaquatic bacteria developing multi-resistance topenicillin and other antibiotic medicines and weknow that fish living in waters close to sewagetreatment plants are being affected by hormonesand other substances which pass through theplants. However, this is a question that is moreeasily asked than answered and, while it is veryrelevant to ask it, it is necessary also to lookclosely at the problem before jumping to conclu-sions.

Urban waste will notreplace fertilisersIt should be noted that in regions with high-intensity industrial agriculture, even completenitrogen recycling from cities in the region wouldnot be able to replace synthetic fertilisers by along way. In Denmark, for example, Copenhagencould supply agriculture in the surrounding

region of northeastern Sealand with about 80%of its nitrogen needs. But it would take an urbanpopulation of 120 million people to supply theentire Danish agricultural sector with nitrogen.

Looking at the same thing from a farmer’sperspective, one can calculate that a farm ofabout 100 hectares could absorb nutrients fromabout 4,000 people. The farmer serving as wastemanager for urban enclaves of that size mightnot seem realistic today, but as was pointed outabove, there are good reasons why ecosystemservices from agriculture should include urbanwaste management. Moreover, there is anunderlaying economic basis: the annual percapita cost for waste management in Denmarktoday is about 275 Euro, which adds up to morethan 1 million Euro for an urban area with 4,000inhabitants.

This figure should just be seen as an indi-cation. It is in fact very difficult to value theecosystem service of urban waste management.One can calculate the value for parts of it, likeusing less fossil fuel to produce fertilisers, buthow does one value having fewer or no multi-resistant bacteria in the water, for example?

Room for improvement. Distribution of the nitrogen content (g/day) in household waste with thepresent system (top) and a future urine-separating system (bottom).

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Dr Jakob MagidThe Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmarkjakob.magid@agsci.kvl.dk

Another obstacle is that the food industrymay not accept the products from land fertilisedwith human urine whether there is factual groundfor this or not. This of course also makes farmersreluctant, which is perfectly understandable. Ofcourse it would be extremely damaging if a farm-ing system became a source of disease in theeyes of consumers. However, the areas neededto absorb urban fertilisers are relatively small.It could be done on a contractual basis, compen-sating farmers economically.

Despite the problems, we need to be able toprovide this kind of solution within a generationor so, not least because large parts of the devel-oping world are going to build sanitation sys-

Pure urine. Con-centrations of anumber of heavymetals and xeno-biotics in humanurine from sepa-rating systems inDanish grassrootsprojects, com-pared to munici-pal sorted waste(MSW) compostand sewagetreatement sludge.

tems. The same is true for the EU accessioncountries and also parts of southern Europe.Unfortunately, in our part of the world we canexpect a slower development, since we alreadyhave the infrastructure in place, albeit old andserving an unsustainable system.

Urban planning and management must beexpanded to include understanding of and re-sponsibility for the urban metabolism. In thefuture, planning and management of urban areasshould embody a stewardship of the land re-sources needed to absorb and transform urbanwaste and fertilisers. A waste managementsystem involving peri-urban farmers should bedeveloped.

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The DOK long-term experiment in Therwil,Switzerland, set up in 1978, is designed to findout to what degree organic farming is sustain-able. Four farming systems are being compared:biodynamic; bio-organic; conventional usingfarmyard manure; and conventional using exclu-sively mineral fertilisers. The conventional sys-tems were adjusted to integrated farming sys-tems in 1985. The same crop rotation was usedin all four systems including root crops, cerealsand grass-clover.

The input of soluble nitrogen is about 30%in the two conventional systems, while input ofphosphorus is about 60%. In the organic systema small input of rock phosphate, potassium and

magnesia was allowed, accounting for about15% of total nutrient supply to the fields. In thebiodynamic system no fertilisers were added.The input of energy in the organic system com-pared to conventional systems is about 50%. Inboth organic systems mean yields were 80% ofthat of the conventional systems. Over time, thewheat yields have increased in all four systemsbut increases have been greater in the con-ventional systems due to the input of pesticidesand fertilisers. For winter wheat the differenceis about 15% and for potatoes as high as 40%,due to problems with nutrient supply and dis-eases.

Here we will look at some results from the

Soil fertility in sustainablefarming systemsDr Paul Mäder looks at some results from the DOK experimentconcerning the effects of farming systems on ecosystem services andpresents the results of studies comparing soil fertility in organic andconventional farming systems.

The driving force.Microbial biomassas related to nu-trient and energycycles. The figurealso shows aselection of indi-cators (greenbullets).

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DOK experiment concerning the effects of farm-ing systems on ecosystem services, focusing onthe soil processes governing these services.Long-term evaluations are essential in this field,as soil quality changes dramatically during thetwo decades after conversion from one farmingsystem to the other.

After 21 years some differences between thesoils in the four farming systems of the DOKprojects are clearly visible just by looking at thesoil surface. Disaggregation of soil particles inthe conventional plots leads to more cracks and

a smoother soil surface, formed mainly by thesilt fraction. There are still some weeds and moreearthworm holes and casts in organic farmland.Last autumn (2002), which was very wet, theconventionally-managed plots were flooded,while water infiltration was still intact in theorganically managed land.

When looking at soil fertility in relation tosoil life it should be noted that the energy cycleand the nutrient cycle are closely linked. Thedriving force behind both is mainly the micro-bial biomass in the soil, as shown in the figure

Soil properties in the DOK field. Conventional farming using farmyard manure = 100.1

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on p. 37. This figure also shows a number ofindicators of soil fertility. The figure on the oppo-site page shows a comparison of soil fertility inthe different farming systems using some ofthese parameters. Soil quality is better in theorganic systems than in the conventional systembased on farmyard manure, while the systemusing mineral fertilisers has the lowest values formost parameters. The biggest differences are tobe found in microbial and faunal soil properties.The soil animals assessed (earthworms, spidersand beetles) are roughly twice as numerous inorganically managed soils as in conventionallymanaged soils. The differences are not that greatwith regard to chemical and physical soil proper-ties.

Of course these differences are of import-ance when it comes to nutrient cycling. Phos-phorus transformation between microbial bio-mass and soil solution was much higher in bothorganic systems. Also nitrogen delivery of thesoil to plant nutrition was higher. Furthermore,aggregation stability is higher in the organicsystems, which is most important for soil struc-ture formation affecting resistance to soil ero-sion.

The DOK project has also shown a positivecorrelation between microbial biomass and wheatyield in organic systems. However, in systemsusing mineral fertilisers and pesticides there isno such correlation, which shows the importance

of soil life if you rely mainly on natural soilprocesses, while as soon as you add mineral fer-tilisers you bypass microbial life in the soil.

An assessment of the diversity of the entiremicrobial community in the soil found the great-est diversity, expressed as the Shannon Index, inthe biodynamic system and the least in the con-

Correlation between metabolic quotient anddiversity (Shannon index).1

Organic farmingperforms better.Ecological per-formance of organicfarming (ratingbased on a reviewof 400 studies).Subjective confi-dence interval of thefinal assessmentmarked with X.2

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ventional system using mineral fertilisers. Therewas also a correlation between efficiency in car-bon transformation processes in the soil andmicrobial diversity (see figure p. 39, top). Ahigher diversity was related to a higher effi-ciency, as indicated by a lower metabolic quo-tient. Straw decomposition and microbial bio-mass build-up was more efficient in bio-dynamic systems than in conventional systems.

The reason why microbial diversity is higherin the biodynamic system than in the organicsystems may be that there is a transfer of mi-crobes contained in the manure compost used inbiodynamic farming. However, there is no datato support this.

There are other long-term research projectsfrom, among other places, Sweden and Germanysupporting the conclusion that organic farming

1. Mäder, P., Fließbach, A., Dubois, D., Gunst, L., Fried,P. & Niggli, U., 2002 : Soil fertility and biodiversity inorganic farming. Science 296: 1694-1697.

2. Stolze, M., Piorr, A., Häring, A. & Dabbert, S.,2000: The environmental impact of organic farming inEurope. Organic farming in Europe, economics andpolicy; Volume 6. University of Hohenheim (Hago Druck& Medien, Karlsbad-Ittersbach, Germany).

systems maintain greater microbial activity andgreater diversity of invertebrates in the soil thando conventional systems. A review of 400 stud-ies evaluating ecosystem services from organicfarming shows that the ecological performanceof organic farming systems is better than that ofconventional farming in most aspects (see figurep. 39, bottom).

Dr Paul MäderResearch Institute of Organic Agriculture, Switzerlandpaul.maeder@fibl.ch

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The hydrological cycle offers the basic servicethat makes agricultural production possible. Italso functions as a fundamental constraint topotential production in water-scarce regions. Wewill look at water from both these perspectives.

Water cycle: the bloodstream ofthe biosphereThe global water cycle functions as the blood-stream of the biosphere. Terrestrial as well asaquatic ecosystems are incorporated within thiscycle: terrestrial systems feeding on soil water,and aquatic on surface water. Also, human societyis part of the water cycle, withdrawing liquid

water, transforming it into vapour flow throughconsumptive water use and polluted return flow.In other words, water is a common denominatorof two systems: the global ecosystem and thesocietal system. The water cycle makes life pos-sible in the biosphere but water is at the sametime a vital ingredient of human security. Mosthuman activities are more or less water-depend-ent.

While ecosystems provide society with life-support in terms of ecosystem goods (includingfood) and services, society by its way of man-aging water introduces water degradation interms of pollution, salination, depletion and

Agriculture’s interactionwith the water cycleProfessor Malin Falkenmark gives an overview of agriculture’s inter-play with the water cycle at global, regional and local levels, arguingthat any discussion of sustainable agriculture has to take this aspectinto account. Water constraints will inevitably be a major obstacle infeeding the growing world population and this has implications forEuropean agriculture in years to come.

The bloodstream of the biosphere. Linkages between the circulating water, the terrestrial and aquaticecosystems and human society, withdrawing water and returning it as polluted return flow or vapourflow.

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disturbance of circulating water and the eco-systems that depend on it. These effects tend tohit back at human security. Some of them areavoidable, like leaching of surplus nutrients,while others are unavoidable, like river depletionafter irrigation.

On the local scale, society has to cope withtwo virtually incompatible imperatives: to securesocio-economic development on the one handand ecological protection on the other. Thismakes the intentional striking of trade-offs anessential component of sound environmentalmanagement, which is the background of theongoing international Dialogue on Water forFood and Environment.

Water consumption byagricultural productionAll terrestrial ecosystems involving plant pro-duction consume water. The links betweenhumans and ecosystems as seen from the per-spective of the water cycle can be clarified bystudying the partitioning of the continental pre-cipitation into green vapour flow and blue liquidflow. Two thirds of the precipitation is consumedby the terrestrial biomes (the largest part byforests), while only one third forms the renew-able blue water resource available for human use(see figure on opposite page).

The blue water flow is some 40,000 km3 peryear. Only about 10% is being withdrawn forhuman use in households, industries and irri-gation. Of this, two thirds are consumptive useand transformed into green water flow, while theremaining third forms return flow. To discussagricultural interaction with the water cycle wecan benefit from this distinction between greenand blue water flows. Irrigated agriculture issupported by blue water, in the process trans-forming it into green, while rain-fed agriculturefeeds directly on green water.

Altogether, today’s agriculture consumes al-most 7,000 km3/yr, of which less than half isfrom irrigation. European agriculture consumesalmost 850 km3/yr, of which 12% is blue-water-supported, the rest is based on green water.

The water cycle as a constraint:feeding humanity by 2025If we are serious about the Millennium Develop-ment Goals to alleviate hunger and malnutrition,

agreed by world state leaders at the UN GeneralAssembly in 1999, any outlook on agriculture’sfuture interaction with the water cycle has tofocus on how much water will actually be neededto feed tomorrow’s humanity.

One question to be posed is how much morewater has to be literally consumed to produce thefood needed on a nutritionally acceptable leveland where is that water to be found: from riversand aquifers, as reduction of non-productivelosses from crop fields and canals, or as watercurrently consumed by terrestrial ecosystemslike forests and grasslands? Where a particularregion cannot meet the water needs for food self-sufficiency, food imports from another regionmay be the alternative.

Earlier studies on water and future food pro-duction have basically been projections askingwhat production can be foreseen, based onassumptions regarding irrigation expansion andmarket development and taking a blue waterapproach. The result, however, leaves a large‘hidden food gap’ in precisely those areas thatare to be given priority in the efforts to reach theMillennium Development Goals: Sub-SaharanAfrica and southern Asia. Evidently a fairerapproach is to make a back-casting analysis,asking how much additional water will be re-quired and from where it can be taken.

The calculation has to start from the amountof water consumed in food production with to-day’s diets, which varies from 690 m3 per capitaper year in undernourished regions to 1,640 m3/p/yr in well-fed regions. A mixed diet on anacceptable nutritional level would need 1,300m3/p/yr more or less irrespective of climate,since differences in evaporative demand is beingcompensated by the difference between C3 andC4 plants (differing in terms of the time stomatastay open to take in carbon dioxide, therebylosing water). This means that the additionalgreen water flow needed by 2025 to achieve dietupgrading while at the same time feeding theadditional population amounts globally to 3,800km3/yr. This is of the same magnitude as thetotal global use of blue water today.

Looking at this problem at the regional scale,one finds that the two regions dominating the‘hidden food gap’ would need almost incompre-hensible additional amounts of water to reachnutritionally acceptable food production. Sub-

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Saharan Africa would need 3.1 times as muchwater as used today and Asia 2.2 times as much.There are four possible sources for this addi-tional water:

• irrigation/blue water (opposed by environ-mentalists);

• reducing losses (‘crop per drop’ improve-ments);

• expansion into forests and grasslands (op-posed by environmentalists); and

• virtual water imports (imports of food grownelsewhere).A recent assessment1 indicates that by 2025,

on a global scale, increased irrigation might covera maximum of 20% of the overall additionalwater needs; loss reduction may cover a maxi-mum of 40%; while horizontal expansion orimport will have to provide the remaining 40%.This means some 1,500 km3 of forests and grass-land turned into agricultural land for food pro-duction every year. There are, however, largeregional differences. There is not much room forhorizontal expansion in southern Asia, while, inthis rather short time perspective, only limitedirrigation can be expected in Sub-SaharanAfrica, where 95% of the farmers are currentlyrain-fed.

In any region, local considerations will haveto arrive at acceptable trade-offs between in-

creased agricultural production and protection ofecosystems. Many parallel water uses andconflicting interests will have to be reconciled.Since agricultural intensification will often in-volve increased consumptive use, the result willbe river depletion, which has to be balancedagainst needs for minimum flows for down-stream aquatic ecosystems. In the developingworld many river basins are already ‘closing’ inthe sense that there is not much water left foradditional consumptive use. The margin for agri-cultural expansion is limited.

In 2025 another three billion people can beexpected to live under conditions of water scar-city or chronic water stress. Wherever conditionsdo not allow food self-sufficiency the alternativewill have to be food imports from betterendowed regions. Today, world food trade, whentranslated into water flows, already amounts tosomewhere between 500 and 1,100 km3/yr.Moreover, a certain correlation has been iden-tified between water stress and food importswith a breaking point around 1,500 m3/p/yr.Based on this correlation, the water deficit-induced potential demand for cereal import isexpected to grow by 110 Mtonne per year.

The outlook outlined above clearly hasimplications for European agriculture in yearsto come. Today’s perception in Europe is thatagriculture has to defend itself economically by

Most water is green. Consumptive water use by terrestrial ecosystems as seen in a global perspective,and green water flows from different biomes in tropics and temperate zone.

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identifying more functions besides food pro-duction. As shown here, there may also be a needto take into account the rapidly growing globalneeds for food. Achieving the MillenniumDevelopment Goals will demand global solidar-ity.

The trend towards increasing food importsby poor countries is being further exacerbatedby economic and ecological considerations.Economic criteria suggest that the use of scarcewater for urban and industrial use is moreworthwhile than producing food that could beimported from better-endowed regions. Eco-logical criteria call for limiting river depletion

Professor Malin FalkenmarkStockholm International Water Institute, Swedenmalin.falkenmark@siwi.org

so that some 20-30% of the river flow is beingcon-served for downstream aquatic ecosystemsand their biodiversity.

Since Europe can be seen to a large degreeas a better-endowed region, we ought to lookahead and incorporate into today’s agriculturalplanning a long-term perspective, besides today’sconcentration on multifunctional agriculture.

1) Falkenmark, M & Rockström, J 2002: Neither waternor food security without a major shift in thinking - Awater scarcity close up. World Food Price InternationalSymposium, Des Moines, Iowa 2002. In press.

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The effect of ecosystem services like biologicalcontrol and pollination can be dramatic. One ofthe most dramatic examples of biocontrol everseen is from Lake Mbondarra in Australia, wherean introduced weed, Salvinia molesta, had inva-ded the lake, covering the entire surface andcausing drastic eutrophication. The problem wassolved when biologists went back to the originalenvironment of the weed and found the salviniaweevil, a 3 mm-long beetle feeding on the waterweed. The beetle was introduced in the lake andthree yaers later the weed was completely gone.

However, this sucess story is unfortunatelya rather rare exception. Most biocontrol attempts– where species are moved to new areas to serveas control agents – during the last 100 yearshave failed. The rate of success is in fact just 10%,and it has not increased over this long period of

time. This is because the fact has been largelyoverlooked that the biocontrol agents needhelp. They need biodiversity, primarily pollen,nectar, shelter or alternative hosts, to survive andbe able to do their job.

By adding biodiversity to the landscape, wecan improve ecosystem services like pollinationand biological control of pests. But to do theright thing, we must know the ecology of the sys-tems we are working with.

ShelterTo start with shelter, a classic example fromEurope showing that fairly simple measures toincrease bidoversity can be very efficient, arethe so-called beetle banks. Beetle banks arewinter refuges for predatory insects in the formof soil banks in the fields, sown with one single

Fairly simple measures in the agricultural landscape can greatly improveecosystem services such as biological pest control and pollination.However, knowledge on the ecology of the organisms involved is crucial,says Professor Steve Wratten.

Biological control and pollinationin sustainable agriculture

Beetle banks work. Emigration of the beetle Demetrias atricapillus from beetle banks, spring 1989.Mean proportion of total caught/date at 0-60 meters from ridge.

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species of grass (Dactylis glomerata). The preda-tory insects need such dry and slightly elevatedareas for their hibernation, until the pests theyprey on are back in the crops in the springtime.All the farmer has to do is to create the banks,the beetles will come by themselves. Within twoyears from the establishment of a beetle bankthere will be about 1,000 insects per squaremetre, which means that a typical bank, 400 or500 metres long and about 1.5 metres wide, willhouse about one million beneficial insects in thewintertime.

As shown in figure on p. 45 the predatory in-sects move from the beetle bank into the fieldwhen the spring comes, and they move at least60 metres from the bank. This also indicates thatan optimal distance between beetle banks inpractical agriculture would be around 150 metres.

Furthermore, the beetle banks do not just im-prove invertebrate biodiversity, they also provideextra ecosystem services in the field of conser-vation. Today, the highest population density ofthe partridge in Britain is on beetle banks. Alsothe harvest mouse (Mus minutus), which is therarest land mammal in Britain, has its highestpopulation densities on beetle banks.

Pollen and nectarUsing parasitic wasps to control aphids is themost succesful biocontrol method implementedso far. The wasps lay their eggs inside the aphids,and the aphids die as they are consumed frominside by the wasp larvae. However, the waspsthemselves do not feed on aphids. They needpollen and nectar to survive, as do hoverflies,another group of insects whose larvae feed onaphids. By growing pollen-rich flowers, such asfor example Phaselia in gardens or around cropfields, populations of wasps and hoverflies canbe increased and aphid populations reduced (seefigure below) at very low costs.

It is of course crucial that the biocontrol agentsare provided with the right kind of biodiversity.As can be seen from the figure on the oppositepage it is a big mistake to believe that anyflower providing nectar or pollen will do tosupport any pollen- or nectar-feeding insect.The figure shows the survival of two species ofsmall parasitic wasps in enviroments with onesingle species of flower present. While one ofthese species lives for more than three weeks ifoffered Phaselia to feed on, the other speciesdies after just one week. In fact, it managesbetter if there are no flowers at all to feed on,just water. The explanation for this is that thePhaselia flower has upward projecting hairs onthe style and stamen appendages partly protect-ing the nectaries. Only insects of a certain sizeand strength can overcome these obstacles.

Another example of the same thing can befound in vineyards in New Zealand, whereAlyssum flowers have been used to provide bio-control agents – also in this case a wasp – withnectar. With Alyssum present in the vineyard thelongevity of the wasps is 12-15 days, comparedto less than five days with no Alyssum flowerspresent. Furthermore, with Alyssum present, thefemale wasp will be able to lay about 150 eggsduring her lifetime. Without that food source,she will only lay about 20. So the abundance andperformance of the biocontrol agent is dramati-cally enhanced just by sprinkling some seeds ofthe right species in the vineyards.

PollinationRed clover is an important agricultural crop inNew Zealand. A European species of bumble-

Biocontrol agents need flowers. Hoverfliesreduce aphid population when Phaselia isplanted next to a wheat field. Mean number ofaphids/stem.

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bee, Bombus hortorum, has been introduced topollinate the red clover, since it cannot be polli-nated by the honey bee, whose tongue is tooshort. However, in many areas there are notenough bumbleebees to perform this ecosystemservice efficiently, and the reason for this is ashortage of housing. Bumblebees are social in-sects and the queens need old mouse nests toestablish their colonies each spring. In modernfarmland, however, the soil along fencelines iscompacted by tractors and not many mice nestthere. This problem can be solved by artificialnests – bumblebee motels. Basically, a bumble-bee motel is simply a wooden box with a smallentrance hole on one side and a filling of grassor some other suitable material for the bumble-

bees to nest in. Placing bumblebee motels inagricultural areas has proved to give tremen-dously good results, not only in terms of highrates of occupancy, but also in the sense that thenumber of bumblebee species present increasesin just a few years.

The examples given here all show that bio-diversity added to the landscape can improveecosystem services like biological control andpollination. The biodiversity added does nothave to be complicated, but it has to be the righttype. Sometimes one single plant species willdo, sometimes a mixture of species is needed.In order to pick the right species and take theright measures we must know the ecology of thesystem we are working with.

Biocontrol agents have specific needs. Probability of survival of a medium sized wasp (Fam.Ichneumonidae) fed with water, honey and three different plant species.

Professor Steve WrattenCentre for Advanced Bioprotection, Lincoln University, New Zealandwrattens@lincoln.ac.nz

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Disease management in organic farming sys-tems includes a number of strategies such as:• relatively long crop rotation, resulting in higher

spatial diversity than in conventional farming;• maintenance of soil organic matter and an

active and diverse food web, by returningorganic matter to the soil (manure, compostetc.) and reducing tillage depth;

• minimising excess of easily available nu-trients;

• optimal plant spacing;

• selection of resistant cultivars. However,organic farmers often put food quality (taste)ahead of pest resistance;

• intercropping or mixed cropping, still on anexperimental basis in Western Europe;

Integrated approachesto root disease managementThe microbial community in agricultural soils provides important eco-system services. Healthy soils support healthy ecosystems. ProfessorAriena van Bruggen explains why microbial biodiversity is important andwhy it is different in organically managed soils compared to con-ventional agriculture.

The (in)compatibility hypothesis. Selectingcultivars compatible with organic farming soiltypes reduces root diseases in organic farming.(Garcia Vera and Termorshuizen, unpubl.)

• pest control using plant extracts or approvedfungicides, disliked by many organic farmers;and

• application of biocontrol agents, which is inpractice hardly ever used by organic farmers.Generally, root disease severity is lower in

organic farming systems than in conventionalsystems. One obvious reason for this is thelonger crop rotation, but apart from that there isnot much knowledge to explain the difference.However, there are indications that the betterbalance between nitrogen and carbon supply inthe soil can be of importance, as can the greatermicrobial diversity due to the organic amend-ments (compost, cover crops etc.). Other factorsof importance may be the biodiversity in timeand space (mixed cropping and under-storeycrops), the variety of crops and cultivars perfarm and the use of appropriate cultivars fororganic farming1.

Studies of the appearance of corky root (aroot disease) in tomato plantations in Californiahave shown that the soil and plant variable mostassociated with corky root is nitrogen. The higherthe nitrogen content in soil or plant tissue, thehigher the corky root severity, and the higher thenitrogen mineralisation potential the lower theseverity of the disease. However, most of thedifferences between organic and conventionalsystems in this case can be explained by the croprotation factor 2.

A long-term study of 400 farms in the Nether-lands showed that the occurrence of four dif-ferent plant diseases was consistently lower inorganic than in conventional farms and therewas a positive correlation between disease sever-ity and total nitrogen application (reanalysedfrom Tamis and van den Brink, 19983).

Most cultivars used today have been selected

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Diseasesuppression inbioassays, take-alldisease of barley,for three differentinoculum doses(0%, 0.5% and 2%)for compatible andincompatiblecultivars. (GarciaVera and Termors-huizen, unpubl.)

for conventional farming systems and may not bethe best for organic farming. In particular rootdevelopment and disease resistance may not begood enough. In other words, cultivars for con-ventional farming may be incompatible withorganic farming soil types and vice versa. If thisis the case, the incompatible combinations wouldperform less well than the compatible ones. Ascan be seen in the figure on the previous page‘compatible’ soil/cultivar combinations ofbarley were far more suppressive to take-alldisease than were incompatible combinations.The same was true for leaf rust on barley in potexperiments. However, comparing organic andconventional fields simply in terms of diseaseseverity does not take into account the pos-sibility that the disease may not have been intro-duced to some fields. This is why experimentscomparing disease severity in farming systemsshould include tests in which the pathogen isadded to soils. This was done with Gaeumann-omyces graminis, the causal agent of take-all(see figure above). Even after addition of thepathogen the difference between compatible andincompatible combinations was sustained, al-though to a lesser extent at the highest inoculumdose.

For the farmer the choice of cultivar is oftena trade-off between the higher production poten-tial of modern cultivars and the better pest resist-ance or nutrient uptake capacity of older culti-vars. The higher production potential has oftenbeen developed at the expense of a weak rootsystem, that is not very well adapted to lookingfor nutrients in the soil and is sometimes also

very susceptible to root diseases. There is a needfor modern cultivars adapted to organic farmingsystems.

Soil health and ecosystem healthRapport4 suggested a number of indicators forecosystem health:• integrity of nutrient cycles and energy flows;

• stability in terms of amplitude of fluctuationsand resilience to disturbance and stress;

• biological diversity;

• interconnectedness between functional units;and

• limited plant and animal disease outbreaks.One way to assess soil health is to study

microbial responses to disturbance or stress, interms of populations, diversity and successions

5.

Typically, soil disturbance induces an increasein microbial biomass, followed by a decrease,while microbial diversity decreases first, follow-ed by an increase. A number of such fluctuationswith decreasing amplitude will take place untilequilibrium is eventually re-established. Suchfluctuations can also be observed along wheatroots, where they can be described as ‘movingwaves’ induced by the disturbance of the roottip protruding through the soil (see figure on p.50).

Microbial populations are generally largerin the rhizosphere than in the bulk soil. Therhizosphere effect is greater in conventionalsoils than in organically managed soils, resultingin fluctuations with greater amplitudes inconventional soils.

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Moving waves.As root tips maketheir way throughthe soil theycreate fluctuationsin bacterialpopulations.Number of CFU(colony formingunits) along wheatroots.

More bacteria, less disease. Relation between waves in disease lesions of Rhizoctonia and microbialpopulations along roots.

Molecular analysis of microbial communi-ties along roots shows that there are differentmicrobial communities in the increasing phasecompared to the decreasing phase. This variationdoes not occur in the bulk soil at a distance of 3cm from the root (along the whole length). Therepeating pattern in microbial communities indi-cates that an impulse of nutrients from the roottip results in growth of micro-organisms behindthe growing tip, followed by death due to nu-trient or oxygen limitation (accompanied by ashift in microbial composition) and regrowth ofthe original community from recycled carbonsources supplemented by substrate from soil

organic matter and decaying root cells. Thiswave-like pattern has a tremendous implicationfor biological control of root diseases. As shownin the figure below, Rhizoctonia disease lesionsexhibit a spatial wave pattern opposite to that ofmicrobial populations along the root6.Thus, roothealth may be related to soil health, which canbe measured by microbial response to a distur-bance. Considering this complex and dynamicsystem one can understand why biocontrol agentsselected from certain locations from the rhizo-sphere do not always perform well when addedto soils or seeds.

Biological control agents added to soil also

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Professor Ariena van BruggenWageningen University, The Netherlandsariena.vanbruggen@wur.nl

oscillate along roots in response to nutrients fromthe root tip. However, they decline faster inorganically managed than in conventionallymanaged soils, so that roots do not encounterintroduced bacteria anymore below a certaindepth, resulting in wave-like fluctuations onlyclose to the root base. Thus, biocontrol agentsare more likely to work in conventional soilsthan in organic soils, probably because they arenot facing the same degree of competition andthus are more likely to survive long enough todo their job. This is why individual controlmeasures like inundative biocontrol may notwork in organic farms. This also means thatresults from conventional farming systems, interms of disease management, cannot be directlytransferred to organic farming systems.

Plant disease management needs a systemsapproach, such as organic farmers use already.There is very little we can actually add to controlsoil-borne diseases in organic systems, except bymaintaining good soil health, keeping microbialdiversity and activity high and available nitrogenlow.

1. Van Bruggen, A.H.C., Termorshuizen, A.J. 2003.Integrated approaches to root disease management inorganic farming systems. Australasian Plant Pathology32: 141-156.

2. Clark, M.S., Ferris, H., Klonsky, K., Lanini, W.T., vanBruggen, A.H.C., and F.G. Zalom, F.G., 1998.Agronomic, economic, and environmental comparison ofpest management in conventional and alternative tomatoand corn systems in Northern California. Agric.Ecosystems Environ. 68:51-71.

3. Tamis, W.L.M., and van den Brink, W.J. 1998.Inventarisatie van ziekten en plagen in wintertarwe ingangbare, geïntegreerde en ecologische teeltsystemen inNederland in de periode 1993-1997. IPO-DLO Rapportnr. 98-01. Wageningen

4. Rapport, D.J. 1995. Ecosystem services andmanagement options as blanket indicators of ecosystemhealth. Journal of Aquatic Ecosystem Health 4: 97-105.

5. Van Bruggen, A.H.C., and Semenov, A.M. 2000. Insearch of biological indicators for soil health and diseasesuppression. Applied Soil Ecology 15: 13-24.

6. Van Bruggen A.H.C., Semenov A.M., and ZelenevV.V. 2002. Wave-like distributions of infections by anintroduced and naturally occurring root pathogen alongwheat roots. Microb. Ecol. 44:30-38.

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For hundreds of years, agriculture has contri-buted to the development of a great variety oflandscapes in Europe. Today rural landscapesare developing in different directions. There isa separation process, in that productive sites areused intensively for agriculture, while marginalareas are abandoned or set aside for other pur-poses. In the productive areas, land use is be-coming increasingly large scale, while in themarginal, abandoned areas, natural successionand eventually reforestation takes place. Thenumber of people working in the landscape isdeclining. A lot of species disappear after aban-donment of marginal grasslands and arable fieldplants disappear in the fields.

In trying to cope with the effects of thesechanges in land use and landscape, the focus ofnature conservation has been changing from thepreservation of single species into preservationof biotopes or habitats and further into creatinga network of biotopes. Today, demands for mod-ern sustainable land use approaches are beingraised. The question to be asked here is to whatextent organic farming can meet such demandsby implementing wider crop rotations, adaptinganimal husbandry to the site and cultivating theland without the use of pesticides and artificialfertilisers.

Despite the positive effects of converting toorganic farming one should keep in mind thatorganic food production does not necessarilyinclude the aim to produce biodiversity, althoughthe numbers of species on organic farmland isclearly higher than on conventional farmland.Even in organic farming there are trends point-ing in the opposite direction. As in conventionalfarming, for example, the fields become largerand the tools more rational. Some species, like

the skylark, have problems with survival in areasof modern field fodder management.

Different approaches could be used to makeagriculture contribute to landscape developmentin the future. One is agri-environmental schemes,where payment for environmental services serveas income support for farmers. Another, so farless used, is nature conservancy advisory serviceslinked not only to goals of nature conservationbut also to farmers’ ideas and approaches. Whenit comes to incentives for working with land-scape development, intrinsic factors like per-sonal historical links to the landscape or per-sonal perceptions of nature are more importantto most farmers than are extrinsic factors likeeconomy.

Below, a few examples of the different ap-proaches outlined above will be presented.

Frankenhausen State FarmAn example of how landscape development andnature conservation can be integrated into sus-tainable agriculture is found in the Hessian StateDomain Frankenhausen, a farm of 320 hectaresserving as a research farm for the University ofKassel. It was converted to organic farming in1998. The landscape here is a mirror of intensiveuse. The fields are cleared and drained, thebrooks are canalised. There are problems witherosion and the vegetation shows that nutrientconditions are eutrophic. Parts of the landscapethat are not productive, such as a dry hill, showsigns of land use in the past. Nowadays they areabandoned and shrubs re-appear. The centralaim of the project is to integrate natureconservation goals, not as a top-down approachof landscape planning, but to inspire farmersrunning the farm to comply with the aims of the

Integrating sustainable farmingwith landscape developmentProfessor Thomas van Elsen argues that when it comes to incentivesfor working with landscape development, intrinsic factors likepersonal historical links to the landscape or personal perceptions ofnature are more important to most farmers than are extrinsic factorslike economy. Here he gives some examples of how landscape devel-opment and nature conservation can be integrated into sustainableagriculture.

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project. A participatory approach is striven for.The scientists and planners take the role ofcompanion catalysts or moderators. In this way,excursions in the landscape and workshops withthe farmers and other stakeholders during a pilotstudy have given important inputs into planningthe future main project.

Medewege FarmLandscape seminars on organic farms have alsobeen tested at the Medewege Farm. Medewegeis a farm of 80 hectares in northeastern Ger-many. This farm has been able to lease an addi-tional 147 hectares of land, of which 100 hectaresis one large field. There are some dry ponds inthe field, but apart from that no structural ele-ments. It would have been easy to plan the croprotation and the division of the new field at thecomputer. But one of the farmers wanted a realencounter with this new piece of landscape andasked for a landscape seminar in which peoplefrom the farm, local authorities and studentstook part. Exercises in landscape perceptionduring the seminar, including paintings,revealed an exciting variety within the largefield that had seemed so monotonous before.Some personal affection concerning the pondswas revealed. Before, a farmer said the pondshad been just something that relieved the mono-tony of ploughing in straight lines.

This seminar was of course only the first stepin developing the landscape in a participatoryprocess with farmers using individual percep-tions and the knowledge of the people being in-volved. In Medewege it has been possible to con-tinue after the first seminar. The planning pro-cess has so far led to practical measures likedividing the large field with hedges.

When it comes to approaches to support farm-ers in developing their landscapes, hand-bookswith practical hints are not sufficient. Anadvisory service for landscape development isneeded. This has been tested in Lower Saxony,where the special advisory service supports farm-ers to develop their landscape at the farm level.The service helps the farmers to recognise thenatural values of their farm. It provides know-

ledge and helps the farmers to realise their ideas.Typically, advisors start their work on a farm byasking the farmer what he or she wants to do.The advisory service system can be seen as abottom up concept aiming to develop landscapeas a participatory process.

In order to be able to assess the contributionsof farms and farmers to landscape values, acommon assessment tool has been developedjointly by three scientific institutes in Germany.It consists of two types of core indicators, onefocusing on biotic benefits (result-oriented) andthe other on landscape benefits (action-ori-ented). These indicators have been tested on 42farms in Germany, half of them organic and halfconventional. In this pilot project all farms havebeen evaluated against the same goals. For prac-tical use, however, the system would need to bedeveloped so that regional goals are defined.The idea is that farmers should be able to use theindicators by themselves.

Professor Thomas van ElsenUniversity of Kassel, Germanyvelsen@wis.uni-kassel.de

A grass-roots approach. Landscape seminar atthe Medewege Farm.

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Thirty or forty years ago farmers and conser-vationists in Sweden were not exactly friends.There was more or less total confrontation, forwhich both sides were equally responsible.There were of course simple economic reasonsfor this: conservationists and bird watchers werepleading for biodiversity protection withoutmuch concern about the economy of the land-owners, while farmers were defending their eco-nomic interests.

Today, this confrontation is more or less over.Both sides have realised that co-operation isessential for preserving biological and culturalvalues in the landscape and that this is also ba-sically a matter of survival for farmers, becauseproviding these ecosystem services can generateadditional income. There is a growing awarenessthat maintaining or adding biological and cul-tural values to the landscape is something that weas citizens will have to pay for, one way or theother.

If we do not develop this co-operation furtherwe can indeed foresee a rather gloomy future forour landscapes being basically divided into twosorts: forests and large-scale agricultural land-scapes of arable fields.

However, sometimes we tend to overestimatethe scientific value of species and biodiversity inthis context. What is most important for themajority of people is the recreational value of thelandscape, not the specific features of biodiver-sity or culture, like bird species or archaeologi-cal sites. However, people spending time in therural landscape for physical and psychologicalrecreation will gain experiences and eventuallyknowledge that will increase their appreciation ofits full range of values.

Grazing, which keeps landscapes open, is an

agricultural ecosystem service of great import-ance for recreation. But what makes these kindsof open landscapes important to us is not onlythat they are nice to look at, but also what theyrepresent in a historical perspective as a culturalheritage from earlier generations. Locally, manypeople are linked to the landscape on a personallevel through their parents and grandparents.

Incentives for grazingKeeping cattle in semi-natural grasslands is oneof the key things in maintaining the landscapevalues. We cannot pay for this service on anindividual basis, so in most of Europe today thesystem we have developed is to pay via our taxbills. We need to develop this system further tosupport a landscape that produces food, fibre,biodiversity, cultural values, recreation and otherecosystem services. We have to find ways to payfor all these services thus improving the possi-bilities for farmers and other people living in thelandscape to support themselves.

This does not necessarily have to be done ona central basis via the tax bill. There are severalprojects today trying to use consumer strategies,one being the ‘Kaprifolkött’ in Bohuslän inwestern Sweden. ‘Kaprifol’ is the Swedish namefor honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum, awell-known and widespread plant species in thispart of Sweden. Meat from farms with cattle onsemi-natural grasslands is marketed in the regionunder the brand of ‘Kaprifolkött’ and consumersare informed that in buying this meat they arehelping to maintain the beautiful open landscape.

Another example can be drawn from the is-land of Öland in southeastern Sweden (see figureon p. 56). Most of the southern part of this islandis a large semi-natural grassland on calcareous

Recreation – an opportunityto engage with citizens

Dr Urban Emanuelsson argues that we tend to overestimate the scien-tific value of species and biodiversity. What is most important for themajority of people is the recreational value of the landscape, not thespecific features of biodiversity or culture. However, people spendingtime in nature for recreation will gain experiences and knowledge thatwill increase their appreciation of its full range of values.

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ground. It is in fact one of the largest grazedareas in Europe, covering about 26,000 hectares.In the early 1990s large parts had been aban-doned. There were grazing cattle and sheep ononly 40% of the total area, with juniper and othershrubs slowly taking over the rest. The biologi-cal and cultural values of this unique landscapewere in great danger. Today almost the entire areais grazed and at least 1,500 hectares have beencleared of shrubs and restored as grassland. TheEU subsidies are a key factor in this develop-ment, because without them it would not have

been economically viable to keep cattle here. Butan interesting point is that the possibility forsubsidised farming in itself was not enough tobring about change. It was not until a close co-operation was developed between farmers, localand regional authorities and other actors in-volved that the downward trend was curbed.Also, the size of the area has been of importance.It takes a certain ‘critical mass’ to facilitate pro-grammes like this.

In other parts of Europe there are a numberof large grasslands like that on Öland, for

Bringing eco-system services tothe market. Theproducers of openlandscape and’Kaprifolkött’....

...and the productin the food store,making consumersaware of whatthey are payingfor.

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Dr Urban EmanuelssonSwedish Biodiversity Centreurban.emanuelsson@cbm.slu.se

Restored grass-land. Ten yearsago 60 % of’Alvaret’, a largesemi-naturalgrassland on theisland of Öland insoutheasternSweden, wasabandoned.Today, most of thearea is grazedagain.

example in Romania, that most likely will beabandoned and lost unless they can be subject tosimilar joint efforts to maintaining their land-scape value.

New role for farmersThe new role for farmers in the future outlinedhere is that of ecosystem service providers pro-ducing not only food but also biodiversity, resto-ration of wetlands, recreational values and otherthings, including ecotourism activities (so far asmall but rapidly growing sector). From a Euro-pean perspective the most urgent change neededto make this happen is to shift present agricul-tural subsidies from goods to ecosystem serv-ices. This is also a matter of justice for theDeveloping World.

However, local authorities will be key players.If they are proactive in supporting the ecosystemservice production of farmers, a lot can beachieved. Physical planning is another key issue.It takes more than just identifying habitats andareas of cultural interest to protect biodiversityand create well-functioning recreation areas. Youneed to plan on the landscape level and some-times you need to design large areas for certainpurposes. Of course, special attention should bepaid to areas close to where most ecosystemservice ‘buyers’ live, i.e. urban areas. Further-more, we need to develop relevant education inmultifunctional agriculture in order to supportthis development.

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Some people would call Aarstiderne (‘Theseasons’) a box scheme because it distributesfood in boxes from farms to households. It couldalso be called a farm-based fresh produce busi-ness, an organic farm company, a food cultureeducator, a complex adaptive system, anorchestrator of food-driven ecosystems or evena self-organising hot-house experiment. Whichdescription you get depends on who you ask.Aarstiderne is a farm based in Barritskov on theeast coast of Jutland in Denmark. It is a Natura2000 area, which indicates the presence of highlandscape and biodiversity values.

The philosophy of Aarstiderne is to recreatea close link between the work of the organicfarmer and the work in kitchens: transformingthe bounties of the land into feasts of honest,nutritious, seasonal and inspired food.

At the start, Aarstiderne distributed organi-cally grown products to about 200 households.What has happened since is mainly a responseto the growing interest in the concept. In 1999Aarstiderne involved 2,000 households and theannual turnover was about two million DanishKroner (DKK). This year Aarstiderne serves asa link between over 100 farms and 40,000 house-holds. The turnover is about 165 million DKK(22 million Euro), which is 5-10% of the totalturnover for organic farming in Denmark. Morethan 160 people are employed in the businesstoday and the products are sold in most parts ofthe country.

About 80% of the boxes are delivered to theCopenhagen area, while the farms are located inJutland. This is not an ideal system and the goalis to develop a more local system where the pro-ducts are grown closer to the consumers.

The guiding values of Aarstiderne are

empathy, quality, creativity, communication,growth, transparency and ecology. Some mayfind it strange that growth is included, but thereason for this is that to enable some things togrow other things will have to stop growing.Transparency is a matter of making the systemsproviding people with food open. More than20,000 people visit Aarstiderne every year, whichamong other things gives an opportunity to dem-onstrate how biodiversity works as a paradigm,in agriculture as well as in natural, undisturbedecosystems.

Today the website is very much the basis forlinking producers and consumers. It was devel-oped because the number of contacts and re-quests reached levels that were no longer possi-ble to handle by telephone. The website hasabout 20,000 visitors per week. But Aarstidernestill handles 2,500-3,000 phone calls per weekbecause conversation with customers is regardedas a very important input in order to develop theconcept further.

Next step farmers’ marketsHowever, if one really wants to have public par-ticipation and broaden the platform for the con-cept, this must be taken even further. Theconcept and the products should be taken to thestreets to enable people to taste what ecosystemservices are. The next step in this respect willprobably be the establishment of farmers’ mar-kets.

Aarstiderne intends to use the network offarmers and citizens now established for thingsother than distributing food in order to supportits goals. One thing is to welcome people as vol-untary workers on the farm within the frame-work of WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on

Developing agriculture throughproducer/consumer interactions

The role of markets and consumers as a driving force in the sustain-able development of agriculture is highlighted by Aarstiderne directorThomas Harttung. The rapidly growing Danish organic farm com-pany is today linking 100 organic farmers with some 40,000 house-holds in an attempt to recreate a close link between the work of theorganic farmer and the work in kitchens.

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Organic Farms). This operates throughout thesummer and the workers do all kinds of non-commercial work such as managing non-culti-vated areas. This enables better management ofthe system than would have been possible other-wise.

The boxes in which the products are deliv-ered to customers can be used to return greenwaste to the farms rather than just returningthem empty. This is important in helping toclose the urban-rural nutrient cycle. This pro-ject is still in its early phase but could be anexample of a privately-driven ecosystem service.

Going carbon neutralAarstiderne is also investigating the possibilitiesof engaging private money in carbon seques-tration. The idea is to make companies or evenprivate households carbon neutral by investingin biodiversity projects, forests or other types ofcarbon sequestration. One source of inspirationto this was the Rio+10 conference in Johannes-

Director Thomas HarttungAarstiderne, Denmarkth@aarstiderne.com

burg last year. It was decided to go carbonneutral by compensating carbon emissions fromconference-related travel, air conditioning, foodand so on by carbon sequestration measures ofthe same amount. It should be possible to bringthe same concept into the microcosm of the farmby establishing hedgerows and wetlands, turningareas into semi-natural grasslands and so on,while funding this through private sector contri-butions.

Aarstiderne wants to prove the point thatfarms and forests can turn themselves into multi-functional ecosystem service providers throughprivate sector initiatives. Even if the publicsector may play the major role for many yearsto come, private sector initiatives are importantto trigger change. A prerequisite for this is thatfarmers understand and use the potential ofinteractions with citizens instead of just beingvictims of subsidy bureaucracies. Food is a goodplace to start!

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The common agricultural policy (CAP) of theEU has changed over the last ten years from tra-ditional price support, direct payments to farm-ers, supply controls and border measures. TheMacSharry reforms in the early 1990s reducedproduct-support prices and broadened othermeasures such as direct compensation paymentsto farmers and support for agri-environmentalschemes. In the Agenda 2000, preparing forenlargement of the Union, this was taken furtherand rural development was introduced as the‘second pillar’ of CAP. This year the Com-mission proposed further reforms in the MidTerm Review. However, they were only partiallyadopted.

Along with the CAP there have been a num-ber of other policy initiatives in the field of agri-culture during the last decade:• European Council in Cardiff (1998): envi-

ronmental concerns should be integrated intoall Community policies;

• Agriculture Integration Strategy (1999). Coun-cil to the European Union;

• Directions Towards Sustainable Agriculture(1999). Commission;

• Commission Communication on Agri-envi-ronmental Indicators (2000); and

• Biodiversity Action Plan for Agriculture(2001), part of the Sixth EnvironmentalAction Plan by the Commission.According to the Commission there are four

cultural and environmental non-trade concernsassociated with agriculture: conservation of bio-logical diversity; maintenance of farmed land-scapes; preservation of cultural features; andprotection against disasters. One of the mainpolicy tools that has been brought forward by theCommission is agri-environmental schemes,based on the perception that farmers are seen asstewards of the land and that society is in-creasingly willing to pay for the environmentalservices of farmers. Agri-environmental schemes

The CAP and agriculturalecosystem servicesDr Paul Campling gives a brief overview of the foundation of theCommon Agricultural Policy of the EU where, even if the concept ofecosystem services is not yet recognised, multifunctionality in agri-culture is a key issue. He discusses the IRENA project which is usinga set of indicators to monitor to what extent the intention to createmultifunctional agriculture is making any difference on the ground.

IRENAindicators. TheIRENA pro-gramme uses fivekinds of indi-cators to monitorthe integration ofenvironmentalconcerns intoagriculturalpolicy.

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were introduced by several member states duringthe mid 1980s. Since 1992, they are obligatoryfor all EU members. Today they are essentialcomponents of rural development programmesand cover 20% of all agricultural land in the EU.

So, even if the concept of ecosystem servicesis yet not recognised, multifunctionality in agri-culture is certainly a key issue from an EU pointof view. The agri-environmental issues, such asnutrient leaching, pesticide use, biodiversity andlandscape, are certainly matters of concern andthe existing policy tools, such as agri-environ-mental schemes, rural development plans andNatura 2000, offer possibilities for addressingthese issues.

Agri-environmental indicators– the IRENA projectAs indicated above, there is a political intentionwithin the EU to integrate environmental con-cerns into agricultural policy. The IndicatorReporting on the integration of Environmentalconcerns into Agricultural policy (IRENA) pro-

ject was set up to find out to what extent this in-tention is making any difference on the ground.More formally, the aim of the project is:• to help monitor and assess agri-environmental

policies and programmes;• to identify environmental issues related to

European agriculture;• to help target programmes that address agri-

environmental issues; and• to understand the linkages between agricul-

tural practices and the environment.IRENA aims to employ in the field 35 indi-

cators that have been identified by the Com-mission. The indicators will be presented in aweb-based data service and in addition two re-ports will be published next year. The first oneis an environmental assessment report of Euro-pean agriculture based on the indicators and thesecond a policy assessment report on integrationof environmental concerns into agriculturepolicy.

Using indicators is a way of providing sim-

Monitoring keyissues.Indicators fortwo key agro-environmentalissues in theIRENA project.

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plified information that reveals complex pheno-mena. In this case the indicators are derived froma number of EU-wide data sets such as CORINELand Cover, the Farm Structure Survey, Euro-waternet, Natura 2000, MARS database onmeteorological data and the European soildatabase.

Good agri-environmental indicators shouldbe policy relevant in that they address key en-vironmental issues. They have to change suffi-ciently quickly in response to action. They shouldbe based on sound science and be measurable,which also implies that they must be feasible interms of data availability. They must be easy tointerpret, communicating essential informationthat is unambiguous and easy to understand.Finally they should of course be cost-effective.

Key agri-environmental issuesThe indicator framework being used by IRENAconsists of indicators of the driving forcesbehind change, pressures on the environment,the state of the environment, the impact of thepressures and the policy responses to these im-pacts, which in turn feed back into the otherindicators. See figure on p. 59.

There are a number of key agri-environ-mental issues that the IRENA operation willmonitor using the following indicators.• fertiliser and pesticide use and the impact on

water quality and eutrophication;• impact on biodiversity and landscape;

• water use and the impact on water resources;

• impact on soil erosion and levels of soil orga-nic matter; and

• greenhouse gas emissions, the monitoring ofagricultural energy use and the production ofbiofuels.The figure on the opposite page shows the

indicators used in monitoring two of these keyissues.

The nitrogen balance map below is anexample of output from IRENA. To generate thiskind of regionalised output, input data is pro-cessed in rather simple models.

To give another example, but using a morecomplicated, regional modelling approach,maps of the risk of soil erosion (kg per hectareper year) can be derived. (Source: PESERA 5thFramework Project http://pesera. jrc.it) .

The indicator of high nature value (HNV)

IRENA output.EU wide nitrogen”surplus”estimates (kg/ha,1997).

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farming areas is monitoring the geographicaldistribution of HNV areas, assessing the target-ing of agri-environmental measures and the im-pact of CAP regimes on these areas. To definehigh nature value areas not only data on habitatsand species (such as the population of farmlandbirds) is used, but also information on farmingcharacteristics such as inputs, products, farmsize and specialisation. It is important to pointout that a large proportion of Natura 2000 areasare found within agricultural habitats. Thereforean indicator of the importance of agriculture toareas proposed for inclusion in the Natura 2000network is the ratio of the area of agriculturalhabitats within Natura 2000 areas to the totalarea of Natura 2000 sites.

Agro-ecosystem servicesfrom a societal point of viewIn conclusion, even if the concept of ecosystemservices is yet not recognised, multifunctionality

in agriculture is certainly a key issue from an EUpoint of view. Proponents of agro-ecosystemservices should trumpet the agri-environmentalissues that agro-ecosystems address: lower nu-trient levels, no pesticide residues, higher bio-diversity and better landscapes. In addition, itshould be possible to demonstrate to a wideraudience the agro-ecosystem model throughagri-environmental schemes, rural develop-ment plans, regional levels of good farmingpractice and Natura 2000.

One of the indicators used for biodiversityand landscape is the area under organic farming.Having increased throughout the 1990s, there isnow evidence that it is declining. It is of courseimportant to find out why this is happening andto address whether organic farming is profitableand viable for European agriculture and whetherit will just remain a niche in the agricultural‘goods’ market for the foreseeable future.

Dr Paul CamplingEuropean Environmental Agency (EEA), Denmarkpaul.campling@eea.eu.int

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A farmer’s viewof ecosystem servicesDr Peter Edling expresses the view that the concept of agriculture asan ecosystem services provider fits very well with his perception of hisrole as a farmer.

Being a farmer is great, or as Cicero put it: “Noprofession is more worthy of a man than beinga farmer.” The farmer can be seen as a suncatcher, using the green plants grown on the farmto catch solar energy, transforming it intosomething that is needed by people and by ourcattle, which in turn are also needed by people.I feel related to the people who have lived on myfarm in earlier times and I look upon myself asthe 30th generation of farmers managing thisland. My wish is that in a thousand years fromnow somebody will enjoy the view of the land-scape in the same way as I do.

About 15 years ago, at a conference in Stock-holm on the values and qualities of the farmlandscape, I expressed my joy at travelling throughthe province of Östergötland in southeastSweden. It is an intensively farmed, undulatinglandscape with patches of woodland and darkforested hillsides in the distance. In August, whencolours are shifting, it is beautiful and, since theland is fertile, the harvest is almost always good.I enjoy the beauty of the landscape and as aprofessional farmer I also recognise andappreciate the efforts made to produce theharvests. Other participants of the conference

Solar-driven, but slow. Ploughing with horses leaves room for reflection.

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strongly opposed this view, telling me that it wasjust nostalgia.

Views have changedI am very happy to find that views have changed.What I was talking about on that occasion 15years ago was what this year’s Bertebos Con-ference is focusing on: the qualities of the farmedlandscape. Even though the concept of ecosystemservices is rather new, it fits very well into theperception of my role as a farmer which has beenguiding me ever since I started farming 30 yearsago.

I know perfectly well that the idyllic small-scale farm of yesterday and the beautiful farmedlandscape was created and maintained onlythrough hard work, discipline and sacrifice. Thismay well be true for all idylls.

Ploughing with horsesSometimes, for my own pleasure, I use my twohorses, Bella and Saga, to plough. They weighabout one tonne each – a powerful, renewable,solar-driven system. Still, one should keep inmind, that it is a full day’s work for this solar-

powered system to do what would take me abouthalf an hour and nine litres of diesel fuel to do,if using my tractor. The input of energy is, as faras I can see, a crucial factor that we do not wantor dare to discuss, in spite (or because) of whatit does to us and our environment. When usingmuscle power, the pace is slow. Fifty years ago,spring farming in my farm took three weeks.Today we do it in three days. To me it is evidentthat the increasing speed is affecting our en-vironment in many ways. We try very hard tosave the lapwing’s nests and the fawns of thereed deer when working on our fields. But stillI am convinced that the increasing speed isdetrimental to biodiversity, because we cannotdo much for the great majority of creatures thatwe are not aware of. Unfortunately, I think theincreasing input of energy affects our environ-ment in many other ways as well.

The good life is not for freeStill, I think the idyll – “the good life” – can stillbe found, but it is not for free. In fact I think itshould be the aim of all human activity toachieve the good life, fulfilling our needs of

A place for comfort and advice. Among the Bronze Age graves under the birches on the ridge.

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Dr Peter EdlingValla Gård, Swedenedling.peter@swipnet.se

food, shelter and spiritual well-being. The twofirst ingredients of this good life are easy tocomprehend, while it is far more difficult todefine the third one. A Spanish monk suggestedthat spiritual well-being requires three things.We need to be aware of the right proportions ofeverything. We need to understand the import-ance of creativity. Finally, we need to understandthe importance of goodness – to realise whetherthings are big or small, important or futile, con-structive or destructive and whether they bringjoy or sadness to the world.

A place for comfort and adviceThere are remains of a Bronze Age settlement onmy farm and on a small, grazed ridge there are1,000-2,000-year-old graves. When facingdifficulties I often sit down under the treesamong the old graves to seek comfort andadvice because in many ways being a farmer isnot very different today from what it was athousand years ago. Our joys and our fears arevery similar: good crops and healthy cattle,droughts and bad kings or governments. Duringthe last 30 years, however, agriculture has turnedinto a surplus problem and an environmentalproblem and not only in the eyes of the public.Among farmers also there is a strong feeling thatthe resources we manage seem to create more

problems than they solve. Hopefully, the newideas on ecosystem services discussed here canbring about change in this respect.

To society at large, agriculture is a supportsystem, a prerequisite for the good life. From thefarmer’s point of view, however, there are twoproblems he always must work to overcome:farming takes a lot of time and costs a lot ofmoney. Without appropriate organisation andsound economic development in agriculture therewould be no need to organize conferences dis-cussing agricultural matters of any kind.

When I try to find solutions to problems thatI face on my farm I often try to do it in terms ofan exercise well-known to everybody who hasdone military service. It is about ‘conquering thehill’, and the challenge is to understand allaspects of the situation, to foresee the intentionsand actions of the enemy, to evaluate all alter-native strategies and finally to act according toyour analysis and decisions. The target, the prob-lems, the resources available to reach the target,your strengths and weaknesses – everything mustbe kept in mind and considered carefully. Bymentally ‘conquering hills’ I have learnt thatthere are often several solutions to every prob-lem and that, sometimes, you may need to reviseyour goals.

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Ecosystem services are economic benefits tohumans derived from the functioning of localand global ecosystems. Defined this way theconcept is useful because it facilitates communi-cation with policymakers and the public usingthe language of economics. It provides a cur-rency. However, we need to be aware that inecology currency is a unit of value: it could beenergy, nitrogen or something else; while ineconomics it is used in its more narrow, literalsense: money.

Another reason why ecosystem services is auseful concept is that it is quantitative. We canuse it for calculations, for example if we wantto reimburse farmers for producing things otherthan food. Trade-offs, which are a central issuein ecology, can be measured, quantifying bene-fits and costs and calculating optimal solutions.

Limitations and dangersHowever, there are also limitations and, if theconcept is taken too far, even dangers in thisapproach. There is no single measure or scalethat can adequately summarise the multiplicityof human values. Ecosystem services is anattempt to do this, taken to its extreme by BjörnLomborg, for example, who in his book “Thetrue state of the world” uses a language similarto that of ecosystem services to convert the valueof everything into dollars or euros. Needless tosay, this is problematic because some thingssimply cannot be measured this way.

One can draw a parallel to the philosophicaldiscussion of what is ‘good’. There was a Pla-tonic idea that ‘goodness’ was some kind ofcurrency or ultimate measure that all humanactions had more or less of, so that they couldbe calculated or balanced out. The modern view

is that there is no such essence of ‘goodness’ andthat different kinds of ‘goods’ can be in conflict.In fact we see these kinds of conflicts all the timein our everyday lives.

Let us look at some examples that may berelevant to ecosystem services. The first con-cerns the Berte Mill, run by the Stenström fam-ily, and the use of methyl bromide. Methylbromide is a toxic chemical used to kill insectsin mills and other places where food is handledand processed. But methyl bromide is also de-stroying the atmospheric ozone layer and it ismuch more potent in this respect than the CFCgases. When the Stenström family learned aboutthis they decided to stop using methyl bromideand developed a heat treatment method that couldcontrol the insects in a far more environmen-tally friendly way. The point here is that thisdecision was not based on calculations of costsof benefits and environmental damages. It wasan ethical decision. The use of methyl bromidewas simply considered to be unacceptable.

Consider the idea of using slaves in promot-ing ecosystem services. No doubt many eco-system services could be promoted with the useof free labour. Of course, no one is willing toaccept this. This is another example of ethicalconstraints, showing the limitations of what shouldor could be calculated.

What is a wife worth?To bring the discussion even further into the ex-treme, consider the question of how much a wifeis worth. This has in fact been calculated byfeminists trying to illuminate how much workwomen were doing, by calculating what it wouldcost to pay employed labour to cook, look afterthe children, clean the house and so on. This can

The use and potential misuseof the concept of ecosystemservices – a critical commentProfessor Jacob Weiner argues that even if there is a risk in assessingecosystem services using one single currency, be it money, energy,nitrogen or anything else, the concept of ecosystem services is usefulbecause it is quantitative, thus facilitating communication with policy-makers and the public.

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be calculated, but still obviously something willbe missing in the picture. What about love, familyvalues and so on? It is neither possible nordesirable to put a monetary value on these things.

The use of emergy has been suggested as acurrency or single measurement for ecosystemservices. The concept should be developedfurther because emergy may reflect some thingsbetter than money does. On the other hand, usingemergy as currency, we will lose the ability tocommunicate with politicians, because they willnot understand it. And again, we will not be ableto calculate everything in terms of emergy. Inher presentation, Professor Falkenmark usedwater as the currency of ecosystem services andshe was able to take this a long way. But still itwas not able to cover everything we need todeal with.

Multifunctionalityis something elseMultifunctionality is a word that has been usedhere in connection with ecosystem services. Amultifunctional agriculture provides a numberof ecosystem services, not just food. Still theconcept of multifunctionality is profoundlydifferent from ecosystem services in the respectthat it implies different goals. If you are sellingchocolate and start selling beer as well, this isnot really multifunctionality because you arestill selling. Multifunctionality includes thevalues of nature and therefore it is implicit thatthere is no single way to measure it. Obviously,the value of a beautiful landscape cannot bemeasured by calculating the cost of sendingpeople to Tivoli to enjoy themselves, for exam-ple, if the countryside is ruined.

An anthropocentric conceptAnother important thing to keep in mind is thatthe concept of ecosystem services is anthropo-centric. It is still a radical point of view thatnature has value independent of humans, thathumans themselves are not the ultimate measureof everything. But values change and a changeaway from anthropocentric thinking in someform or another may well be underway.

What then is the alternative to the idea of asingle currency that has been criticised here?The only alternative is to discuss these issuesand to try to work out what is most important.What type of agriculture do we want? What dowe want agriculture to do? What environmentalcosts and risks are we willing to bear? Eventhough we cannot reduce these questions tocalculations we have to make judgement of whatthe trade-offs are between different types ofgoods.

We also have to find out what is acceptableand what is not, or in other words: what are theethical constraints?

The problems are in the processI am convinced that if we were able make a listof the most important things we want from agri-culture, and the ethical constraints that must berespected, it would be possible to design an agri-cultural system to meet these requirements. Theconflicts are not so great. The biggest problemsare in the process, in the way policy-makingworks in practice, including the strong influenceof interest groups and other distortions of thedemocratic process. But the potential is certainlythere, because values change.

Professor Jacob WeinerThe Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Denmarkjw@kvl.dk

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General awareness of the concept of ecosystemservices must be raised at all levels. There is agreat need for interdisciplinary research to de-velop the concept further. A key issue in makingthe concept operational is to develop methodsto evaluate ecosystem services.

These were a few of the findings from thethematic working groups of the Bertebos Con-ference, facilitated by Associate ProfessorLennart Salomonsson. This digest from thereports of the working groups is not complete,nor does it by any means represent a commonview of the conference participants.

Identification ofecosystem servicesIn order to utilise a broader array of ecosystemservices in agriculture, they have to be re-cognised and understood as such. Therefore,there is a need for holistic research and educa-tion at university level. Scientists must also co-operate with organisations outside universities.The problem of separated disciplines at univer-sities must be overcome.

Society has unconsciously used many eco-system services without recognising their func-tions. They have been taken for granted. A firststep in developing the concept further is to raiseawareness through education at all levels. If wereally think that the concept of ecosystem serv-ices is a useful tool in the future developmentof a sustainable society, then we should be con-cerned by the fact that today it is hardly used,let alone discussed, even at university level.

A better knowledge of ecosystem serviceswould help in defining sustainable development.

An urgent task is to identify those ecosystemservices which may be more or less irreversiblylost because of human activities. It is important

to build resilience, for example through increas-ing the capacity of ecosystems to self-organiseand recover. Resilience could be seen as an in-surance.

Valuation of ecosystem servicesIf future agriculture is to be paid for providingecosystem services, society has to find ways toidentify and evaluate these services. In otherwords, to make the concept of ecosystem serv-ices operational. To do this, it is crucial to findthe relationships between ecosystem functionsand ecosystem services. Consider, for example,the capacity of a river to absorb or handle waste.The river will be able to handle waste up to acertain level or threshold, above which the riverecosystem will be damaged and its ability toprovide the ecosystem service of waste watermanagement will deteriorate. There is probablythis type of threshold for most ecosystems andecosystem services, but in most cases we do nothave the knowledge to define them. Further-more, the thresholds may shift over time becauseof external factors such as climate change.

In the ‘perfect’ market the price mechanismwill prohibit over-exploitation of ecosystem serv-ices, as the price will go up when the resourcesare getting limited. However, such a purely eco-nomic strategy would be dangerous, since it wouldexploit ecosystems to the limits of their capaci-ties. Environmental issues, directly or indirect-ly connected with agricultural production, arenot taken care of by the market price/volumeequilibrium. Furthermore, ecologically-basedproduction such as agriculture and forestryneeds long-term considerations which normallycannot be supported by a free commodity market.

The valuation of ecosystem services shouldnot be determined exclusively by current per-

Awareness raising, interdisciplinary research and the development ofevaluation methods: these are three key issues for developing theconcept of ecosystem services in agriculture further, identified by thethematic working groups at the Bertebos Conference.

Awareness raising andinterdisciplinary research- key issues for the future

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ceptions of what is important. Values change andtoday’s ecosystems are also to be used by to-morrow’s society.

Another important issue is to find ways tovaluate the ‘work’ done by all biologicalorganisms. Even if oxygen has no value on themarket, no-one argues that the oxygenproduction of green plants is worthless.

To solve these problems, more scientific syn-thesis work has to be done. Evaluation tools likethe emergy concept should be further developed.In doing this, interdisciplinarity is essential aswell as co-operation between science and policymakers. It is equally important to communicatehow to use knowledge for practical measures.

Key issues in this process are local initia-tives, transparency and participation.

While some ecosystem services are quanti-fiable by scientific methods, others are notquantifiable at all, like the ecosystem servicesproviding the basis for human life. There are alsoecosystem services that can be valued only byreaching consensus through local and contextualparticipatory processes. Social values are com-plex and all components in rural developmentare hard to measure or quantify. To increase theawareness of the non-quantifiable resources thefeedback loops must be shorter, i.e. the conse-quences of one’s actions must be sensed ornoticed or experienced. The system has to bechanged so that it enables sensory feedbackloops.

Participatory researchand development processesImplementing the concept of ecosystem serv-ices, as discussed here, requires changes at manylevels in society. Many conflicting interests areinvolved and, furthermore, a number of con-flicting interests can be identified in the veryconcept of sustainability. Therefore, participatoryprocesses will be crucial.

Farmers do not participate in defining re-search tasks today. There is virtually no feed-back from farmers to researchers. To facilitateparticipation local arenas should be created asmeeting points for scientists of different disci-plines, farmers and consumers.

In any participatory process it is crucial tobe aware of who defines the focus of the process,on whose initiative it is run and who is bene-

fiting from it. The degree of true participationis dependent on the answers to these questions

The focus and aims of the process must beclear. On the other hand, standards and regula-tions can kill initiatives and eliminate the possi-bility of participants being responsible.

Everybody involved has to trust the process.The process must be allowed to develop in otherdirections than was originally the aim. This isbecause the original aim may not be the mosturgent issue for most participants.

Participatory processes are long-term pro-cesses. No quick solutions or results can be ex-pected.

Implementation ina multifunctional systemIn order to develop multifunctional agriculture,awareness about multifunctionality and the needfor it must be raised at all levels, including thepolitical level. Meeting places, physical and vir-tual, should be created to integrate stakeholdersin an educational process, identify obstacles forchange at local level and provide practicalsupport schemes to farmers.

Existing development work with multifunc-tional systems should be mapped and good ex-amples should be communicated widely. Or-ganic farms could be used as pedagogical tools.

Existing agri-environmental schemes couldbe improved and refined to make them morecoherent and effective.

CommunicationCommunication between researchers, the publicand policy makers is crucial to increase thegeneral understanding of the value of ecosystemservices. There is also a need to increase inter-disciplinary communication within the scien-tific community.

Seminars, courses, workshops and popularpublications are needed. To explain the conceptof ecosystem services to the general public, thegarden could be used as an example.

KSLA is encouraged to make ‘From visionto action’ the theme of next year’s conference,focusing on how the gap between research andaction can be bridged.

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Förteckning över tidigare utgivna nummerÅr 2002; Årgång 141Nr 1 Genteknik – en skymf mot Gud eller nya möjligheter för mänskligheten?Nr 2 Genmodifierade grödor. Varför? Varför inte? – Genetically Modified Crops. Why? Why Not?Nr 3 Skogsfrågor i ”Konventionen om biologisk mångfald”Nr 4 Mindre kväveförluster i foderodling, foderomvandling och gödselhantering!Nr 5 Bondens nya uppdrag OCH Shaping U.S. Agricultural PolicyNr 6 Verksamhetsberättelse 2001Nr 7 Sustainable forestry to protect water quality and aquatic biodiversityNr 8 Foder – en viktig länk i livsmedelskedjan!Nr 9 Fortbildning för landsbygdsutvecklareNr 10 Hållbart jordbruk – kunskapssammanställning och försök till syntesNr 11 Närproducerad mat. Miljövänlig? Affärsmässig? Djurvänlig?Nr 12 Nya kunskaper inom bioteknik och genetik för nya tillämpningar på husdjur SAMT

Fria Varuströmmar – konflikt med djur- och folkhälsa? Vilka möjliga utvägar finns? SAMT

Exempel på verksamhet inom JordbruksverketNr 13 Bland skärgårdsgubbar och abborrar på MöjaNr 14 EU och EMU – broms eller draghjälp för skogen?Nr 15 Hur kan skogsbruk och kulturmiljövård förenas?Nr 16 Vilket kött äter vi om 10 år? Rött, vitt, svenskt, importerat? Vi får det samhälle vi äter oss till!Nr 17 Avsättning av skogsmark

År 2003; Årgång 142Nr 1 Det sydsvenska landskapet, framtidsvisioner och framtidssatsningar SAMT

Idéer för framtidens skogslandskapNr 2 Viltets positiva värdenNr 3 Inför toppmötet i JohannesburgNr 4 Kapital för landsbygdsföretagareNr 5 Kompetensförsörjningen i svenskt jordbrukNr 6 Fiskets miljöeffekter – kan vi nå miljömålen?Nr 7 Verksamhetsberättelse 2002Nr 8 De glesa strukturerna i den globala ekonomin – kunskapsläge och forskningsbehovNr 9 Tro och vetande om husdjurens välfärd (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 10 Svenska satsningar på ökad träanvändning (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 11 Kapital för landsbygdsföretagare (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 12 Feminisering av Moder natur? Östrogener i naturen och i livsmedelNr 13 Crop and Forest Biotechnology for the FutureNr 14 Landskap och vindkraft – i medvind eller motvind (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 15 Lantbrukskooperationen – Hållbar företagsidé eller historisk parentesNr 16 Utvecklingen i PolenNr 17 Mid Term Review Vad händer i Sverige när EU ändrar jordbrukspolitik?Nr 18 Soil and surface water acidification in theory and practiceNr 19 Skogsindustrinsråvaruförsörjningskedja – pågående utveckling och utblickar mot andra branscherNr 20 CAP och folkhälsanNr 21 Vilda djur i stadsmiljö – Tillgång eller problem? –Nr 22 Översvämningar och dears orsakerNr 23 Sötvattenfisk – Framtidens resurs (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 24 Mat med mervärden – Goda affärer (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 25 Hur planeras boendet på landsbygden? OCH Trädgården som rekreation och terapi

(Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 26 Det nya uppdraget – högre utbildning för landsbygd och landskap (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 27 Hör göken han gal – Hur kan ekologiskt lantbruk och samhället gynna den biologiska mångfalden?

(Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)Nr 28 Den svenska modellen för husdjursavel och dataregistrering samt datautnyttjande inom husdjurs-

och växtodlingsområdet (Enbart publicerad på www.ksla.se)

År 2004; Årgång 143Nr 1 Ecosystem services in European agriculture – theory and practice

K. Skogs-o. Lantbr.akad. Tidskr. 142:28, 2003

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