Horticulture

For example, it seems that also in other countries, especially in combination with other factors, markets play a vital role particularly in some regions, dairy farming is connected to some organic concentrations, and subsidies can effectively increase organic farming in certain areas. Therefore, same political approach to increase organic farming does not necessarily work for every region. Our research contains several limitations that should be addressed in future research. The first limitation was that we were unable to analyse all of the possible factors that may affect the share of organic cultivated land. The literature suggests that the concentration of organic farming is affected by more factors than the five included in our analysis . In addition, the data from Pirkanmaa and Southeast Finland indicate that there may be other relevant factors outside the selected conditions. Therefore, the results cannot be regarded as completely comprehensive in terms of explaining the regional differences in the proportion of organic farming. One additional condition could be the role of wholesalers. However, according to our survey, wholesale seems to have a fairly small role in the Finnish organic market, at least from a farming point of view. Data limitations and the appropriate number of conditions for a QCA method influenced the number of selected conditions in this study. The conditions were also carefully selected based on previous studies and the authors’ knowledge of regional features.

The second limitation relates to the changing situation in the spatial share of organic farming, whereby the selected reference year may influence the results. However, changes in the share of organic farming occur relatively slowly, vertical grow and regions with the highest organic shares have held that status for some time. Only regions with close to average values have witnessed more notable changes in recent years. In addition, the conditions were formed to include data that related to different periods: the period preceding 1990 , a wide range of years during which farmers converted to organic farming , and the most recent period . On a wet, cold day in November 2019, farmers from all over Ireland travelled to Dublin, the capital city, to blockade the main roads with their tractors, immobilising traffic. This protest was not organised through the main representative body – The Irish Farmer’s Association . Indeed, it appeared to take both Government and the IFA by surprise. The farmers carried placards reading: “No carbon tax” and “It takes twice the amount of carbon to produce a vegan burger than a beef burger.” Clearly, there was a strong shared sentiment that environmental policies were a threat. With the government pledging to reduce agricultural emissions by 30% by 2030 , plans to transition the sector to sustainable pathways are emerging, yet there are strong indicators that the sector is already experiencing unplanned change, disruption, and conflict. This paper explores this discontent and how climate change policies can aggravate or respond to it through the application of a conception of just transition understood as an integrated justice-based framework for governing the transition to sustainable practices .

Just transition emerged as a grass-roots labour movement in the 1970s to mobilise workers and communities directly affected by environmental policies in the energy sector which resulted in the loss of livelihoods and employment opportunities . Traditionally employed as a labour-oriented concept, trade unions and labour movements constructed this concept to argue that the benefits and burdens of the transition to enhanced environmental governance and protection policies should be fairly distributed . As Rosemberg notes, the just transition concept captures the social and economic complexities of transitioning economies to sustainability. This concept now forms a key component of the global policy architecture on transitions, marked by the International Labour Organisations’ adoption of the Guidelines for just transition towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies for all and its inclusion in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Recent scholarship has emerged to explore the linkages of this concept with established theories of climate, environmental, and energy justice . Theories of environmental and climate justice examine the normative implications of climate change and develop accounts of the moral principles necessary to guide the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change and actions . Less examined, although of significant importance, are procedural elements of justice related to representation, participation, and recognition. Communities affected by planned climate adaptation and mitigation actions experience not only changes to economic landscapes and opportunities, but also to ‘culture, community identity, and sense of place’ . Thus, multidimensional accounts of justice that recognise the interconnections between distribution, participation, and recognition have emerged in concept ualisations of just transition as a wider, more holistic integrated governance framework . As high income countries with established political constituencies, embedded vested interests, and dominant actors transition from unsustainable to sustainable economic systems, the just transition concept has emerged as a critical tool for building the social legitimacy necessary to implement climate adaptation and mitigation policies.

In the Irish and European contexts, the language of just transition features heavily in climate action plans and economic policy materials;and in deliberations and negotiations with workers and communities concerning the energy transition from peat extraction to bog restoration in the indigenous energy sector. In 2021 it emerged as a dominant feature in Ireland’s Climate Action Plan which outlines pathways for transitioning all sectors across the economy. It notes ‘the development of plans to manage the sustainable environmental footprint of the beef and dairy sectors will be central to the achievement of [Ireland’s] climate targets’. However, it provides little insight into how the idea of just transition will be operationalised in the Irish beef farming sector. There are an estimated 78,300 specialist beef farms in Ireland, accounting for over half of all Irish farms . Ireland exports 90% of the beef it produces and in 2018 exported 579,000 tonnes at a total value of €2.5 billion, accounting for over 30% of total food and drink exports . Beef farming is not only an important economic activity in rural Ireland, it is also embedded in the social and cultural fabric of rural communities, identities, and social structures.Irish mythology, music and poetry, such as the epic T´ ain B´ o Cúailnge centring around the theft of a prized bull , provides some insight into the centrality of this sector to the collective cultural imaginary and identity of rural Ireland.The agricultural landscape of Ireland is synonymous with its ‘green’ identity, and images of cows grazing on pastures are regularly used in tourism advertisements.However, beef farming in Ireland is facing challenging times, with a range of pressures acting upon it within the social, political, economic, and environmental spheres. Beef farmers are struggling economically, relying on direct payments from the European Union Common Agricultural Policy , which on average doubles their farm income.

Most beef farms are classed as economically vulnerable, meaning that farm income alone does not remunerate family labour at the minimum wage of €20,129 per annum, thus requiring farmers to engage in off-farm work to supplement their income . Multiple factors are putting pressure on the present system of conventional beef farming, including shifting seasons and extreme weather events , competitive and declining markets, automation and technological innovation , and COVID-19. Public opinion is also changing with some pointing to the harmful environmental and health effects of meat consumption , reducing consumer demand , and problematising the collective imaginary of beef farming communities. Government policy to reduce emissions in order to meet international commitments means that funding and support for the beef industry has been declining for some time, and new policies focus on re-purposing agricultural land for forestry. Surprisingly, although beef farmers are experiencing a shifting physical and economic landscape, the concept of just transition has scarcely been applied to this context by policy makers or by researchers.Ireland’s Programme for Government policy document references ‘just transition’ 19 times in relation to the energy sector , but has little to say on how this concept may be relevant to the beef sector. These factors have all contributed to rising discontent within the beef farming community which erupted into street protests in 2019. These were sparked due to a perceived lack of transparency over how processors determine beef prices, which declined by 12.5% between the beginning of 2018 and mid-2019.Processors are organisations, usually factories, that purchase cattle to process for human consumption. Thus, it is clear the sector is under pressure,indoor growers and this is likely to continue in the coming decades.With the emergence of protests, this paper examines the drivers of beef farmers’ discontentment and how they, and other key actors, are perceiving the situation. Key actors are public and private, formal and informal organisations related to beef farming that have power to influence changes within the sector.

We investigate how the sector is responding, and how key actors are framing the future of beef farming. In doing so, we contribute to theorising just transition processes through a novel model of just transition frames and functions that operationalises and illustrates how just transition frames of different key actors can be aligned, or not, and unpacking how misalignment leads to conflict. Frames and framing approaches are widely used in the study of social movements, but not commonly applied to just transition research . Our model makes an original contribution to the study of transitions in the agricultural and beef farming sectors and can be used to support the design of policies and governance systems to guide in future sustainable climate action planning and implementation.Here, frames refer to strategic communication devices used by key actors to steer solutions in their favour in deliberate framing processes.Drawing upon a conception of just transition as an integrated governance framework for justice, we explore the different experiences and perspectives of key actors across the domains of distribution, participation, and recognition. We apply the concept of frames, which are both interpretations of social and political issues and strategic communication devices for achieving a particular outcome, to analyse the qualitative data . Thus, we investigated the range of perspectives held by different actors, the key points of consensus and conflict between the actors , and how these serve different functions: diagnostic, prognostic, or having an action-imperative . Framing gives insight into how key actors construct meaning around an emerging issue, and into challenges and possible futures being considered . Understanding how key actors are framing the future of beef farming will indicate how the sector could evolve, where resources are likely to be allocated, and who will be involved in shaping its future. Indeed, understanding how key actors are planning for the future is an essential concern for the possibility of a just transition for this sector. There is abundant literature on the application of environmental and climate justice theoretical frameworks when adapting agricultural systems to climate change, and in particular, in lower income less developed locations with heavy dependencies on rainfed agriculture and subsistence farming . Within these accounts, principles of justice are considered in relation to both procedural dimensions, concerning decision-making participants, processes and structures, and distributional dimensions, concerning how responsibilities, benefits, and burdens of mitigation and adaptation ought to be allocated . Schlosberg’s account of climate justice pushes beyond material distributional and formal procedural matters, to consider non-material, situated socio-spatial and cultural factors that influence understandings and perceptions of justice. Embedded in a feminist constructivist epistemology, Schlosberg and Collins identify three interconnected dimensions of justice that require consideration. Firstly, the dimension of recognition is identified as a precondition for distributive justice that involves social respect for the identities and values of populations. Changes in economic activities affect not only income levels, but also social status, influence, and structures within communities. They can affect one’s sense of belonging and purpose and are intimately linked to collective and self-identities . Secondly, the dimension of participation is identified as a key factor in developing relevant policies and practices that can build trust and ownership within communities-in-transition. Participation is closely linked to representation, as representation from organisations and elected individuals in policy-making processes allows citizens to participate in and be recognised by wider society .

Our ultimate goal is to establish an optimal classification metrics set that is suitable for the study area through these steps.In this study, Landsat-5 TM SR data were chosen to establish spectral and index metrics sets for 1990, 2001, and 2010, while the Landsat-8 OLI SR data were used to develop spectral and index metrics sets for 2019 . The yearly mean value composite images of 2010 and 2019 were taken as examples to analyze the spectral and index separability of different land use classes. Therefore, we took the annual reflectance mean value of varying land use samples were extracted from images in 2010 and 2019 to analyze the separability between active cropland , non-active cropland , retired cropland , natural grassland , impervious surface , forest and water body . It can be seen from Fig. 3 that IS, WB, AF, and FR were well separated on visible bands and indices based on both Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-8 OLI images. The mean reflectance values of NAC and RCL were different from other land use classes, round plastic pots while they were easily confused with GL. The reflectance of RCL was lower than the NAC and GL on the visible and shortwave infrared bands and higher than the NAC and GL on the NDISI and NDVI. Although NAC, RCL, and GL were not well separated on the visible bands, they well separated on the shortwave infrared bands and NDISI and NDVI based on the TM image.

However, Fig. 3d shows that the confusing three land use classes were not well separated on the six OLI image bands and three indices. The NCL and GL curves showed high overlap on spectral bands and indices based on both TM imagery and OLI imagery. There was a vast grassland area in the farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, and the NCL was also widely distributed. Since NCL and GL cannot be well separated in spectral bands and indices, especially RCL cannot be separated from other easily confused land use on OLI imagery. Therefore, to distinguish better RCL and NAC from other land use classes, it is necessary to add the texture metrics to classification methodology.GGP also promotes land use classes such as arid cropland, barren mountains, and desert grassland with low ecological functions to land with high ecological functions. Our study present, the retired cropland in the study area mainly includes three types of land use change trajectories: 1: converted from the cropland in 1990; 2: converted from the cropland cultivated after 1990, and 3: converted from the other land use classes. Their areas are respectively 51.97%, 25.02%, 20.10% of the total area of retired cropland in 2019. Trajectories of other types account for a relatively small area by 2.91% of the total area of retired cropland in 2019. See Table 4 for details. The retired cropland in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains mainly distributes in Duolun, Taipusi, Huade, Shangdu, Chahar Right Rear, Chahar Right Middle, and Siziwang County . The eastern region has a larger amount of precipitation, and the climate conditions are suitable for the survival of the shrubs planted by GGP. Furthermore, for the remaining four counties in the western region, due to drier climate conditions and a smaller proportion of cropland, there is also less cropland to be returned.

Since Wuchuan City has more high-quality cropland than other counties, it has the smallest area of retired cropland as shown in our result. Nearly 45% of the retired cropland converted from cropland in 1990, and around 25% of the retired cropland converted from cropland cultivated after 1990, which were in line with GGP’s original intention to retire some of the cropland with low producibility to plant wood or shrub with higher ecological service functions. What needs to be emphasized is that nearly 20% of the retired cropland was not marked as cropland in 1990, 2001, and 2010. It is possible that for ten years was used as a time interval, the retired cropland may be converted from cropland cultivated within two-time notes, or it may convert from other lands .To evaluate the vegetation dynamics after GGP, we divided the last three decades into three time periods: 1990–2000, 2001–2010, and 2011–2019, and calculated the long-term Landsat NDVI-mean value of retired cropland area and that of the entire study area. First, to evaluate the vegetation dynamics in the area of retired cropland, the mean value of NDVI per decade within the scope of retired cropland in 2019 was calculated. The result present in Fig. 7. It can be seen from Fig. 7 that the mean value of NDVI of retired cropland in the three periods increased gradually with mean values 0.1524, 0.1545, and 0.1728, respectively. Moreover, the growth rate from 2011 to 2019 is higher than the rate from 2001 to 2010. This result indicates a significant vegetation restoration in retired cropland areas over the last three decades. However, over the previous ten years, vegetation restoration showed a considerable increase related to the launch of GGP in the study area and its strengthening during the last decade. Second, to evaluate the vegetation dynamics of the entire study area, each decade’s NDVI-mean value was calculated. A correlation curve with the change of the retired cropland area and the change of the cropland area was made and is presented in Fig. 8. During the past 30 years, the NDVI-mean value of the entire study area showed an increasing trend, as shown in Figs. 8 and 9, with values 0.1559, 0.1562, and 0.1749, respectively.

The NDVI-mean value of the study area did not change greatly between 1990 and 2010, but as the percentage of retired cropland in the total area increased considerably from 2011 to2019 , the NDVI-mean value of the study area has increased significantly from 0.1562 in 2010 to 0.1749 in 2019 as well . The vegetation restoration in the entire study area was also accompanied by a decrease in the percentage of cropland in the total area . The result shows that, on a large area, the decrease of cropland and the increase of retired cropland associated with the vegetation restoration to a certain extent. The retired cropland can show a more stable NDVI value on remote sensing imagery than cropland and with fewer seasonal changes. However, the change of NDVI value in the study area is affected by many factors, such as climate change and natural ecology. The long-term NDVI-mean value was used in this study shows a significant correlation with decreasing cropland and increasing retired cropland, as shown in Fig. 8.The farming-pastoral ecotone environment in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia is severely damaged due to drought and endangered ecological environment. The land use in this area has also changed greatly because of the change in a natural environment and artificial afforestation program such as GGP. In the past 20 years, with the rapid development of remote sensing technology, the study of evaluating the ecological environment of farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains has attracted extensive attention. In this study, the RF-GEE classifier and multi-metrics were addressed to identify the changes of cropland and retired cropland in the northern foot of the Yinshan in Inner Mongolia over the past 30 years. The influence of the multi-metrics set on classification accuracy, the relationship between LUCC and vegetation restoration in the study area are the key points of our research. 4.1. The accuracy of cropland and retired cropland mapping The training data quality is one of the critical factors to obtain satisfactory classification results .

The fact that active cropland and non-active cropland exit simultaneously in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains was fully considered when the cropland sample was selected. The sample of non-active cropland accounted for 20–30%. Although nonactive cropland and retired cropland are easily confused with natural grassland in the study area , the highest OA and Kappa coefficients of cropland classification were obtained in this study . The highest F1 score of croplands was 0.94, which is higher than the accuracy of previous land cover mapping studies focused on entire Inner Mongolia or global scale based on Landsat data . The accuracy of our study can support subsequent research about complex cropland use patterns, such as remote sensing monitoring of fallow and abandoned cropland in the farming-pastoral ecotone. On the other hand, the highest F1 score of the retired cropland was 0.75, with lower accuracy than the cropland and others. Retired cropland’s spectral and index metrics have weak separability with those confusing land use classes ,hydroponic bucket and the texture metrics of retired cropland are similar to that of cropland. In the research on land use in InnerMongolia, there are very few studies that classify retired cropland as a single land use class, and most of these previous remote sensing land use classification researches in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains adopts visual interpretation method. The precision of cropland can reach more than 0.9. Chun used Landsat TM data to visually interpret the land use change in Wuchuan County in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains, with accuracy over 0.9 and concluded that the cropland in this area has a continuous decreasing trend. Wang took the year 2000 when human intervention was minimal as an example, using supervised classification and visual interpretation to produce a city-level land use map of Ulanqab city in the middle part of the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains. In this research, the UA of arid cropland and irrigated cropland were higher than 0.95, and the PA of arid cropland and irrigated cropland were higher than 0.80. However, the methods introduced by Chun and Wang are time-consuming and labor-intensive and do not have the advantages to the large-scale research. Most of the land use classification in large-scale studies has not mentioned the retired cropland, while there are remote sensing results of the shrubland or sparse shrubland on a large scale, with the accuracy ranging from 0.30 to 0.70 .

Although the “Grain for Green” project has been implemented in Inner Mongolia for 20 years, the existing land use research in Inner Mongolia classifies the retired cropland into the category of woodland. It does not certify it as a separate type of land use, except for studies with smaller spatial scales. A study has explained this problem from another view; Yin et al. classified the degraded cropland in Inner Mongolia as a single land category. The UA of degraded cropland varied from 0.42 to 0.70 in different years. The PA was between 0.65 and 0.96. Nevertheless, still retired cropland is differing from degraded cropland even in the ecological transition zone. From the results in Section 3.1, it can be seen that the vegetation coverage of the retired cropland in arid and semi-arid regions is not high. This phenomenon is expected in the farming-pastoral ecotone in the northern foot of the Yinshan Mountains in Inner Mongolia. Therefore, classify the retired cropland as a single land use type has a great significant when monitor the LUCC in farming-pastoral ecotone of northern China using remote sensing technology.Human land use is a dominant driver of the greening earth . GGP is a typical case of Human-intervention in land use, especially in the farming-pastoral ecotone. Previous studies have shown that GGP has improved China’s ecology and of Inner Mongolia . By the end of the 20th century, the vast grasslands in the farming-pastoral ecotone in northern China started to be cultivated and approximately doubling the cropland area. A large amount of cropland was often accompanied by extensive land degradation . Inner Mongolia is considered one of the most severely degraded regions in China. Therefore, almost all national environmental protection land restoration projects were launched first in Inner Mongolia, which became the Chinese province with the highest investment in ecological restoration programs . Land degradation directly affects the region’s vegetation dynamics, which is particularly prominent in the Mongolian Plateau .

Mainstreaming of organic agriculture in the public, pushed by green policies and NGO activities, continues to play an important role in its success, promoting empathy for and trust in organic certification schemes. Lastly, organic products are more profitable for farmers, while consumers, not governments, pay for most of the premium prices. However, there are also important limitations to the biodiversity benefits of organic farming, resulting from reduced yields, misconceptions about pesticide use, taxon-specific benefits, and commercial intensification of production. While reducing food waste and meat consumption are important for global food security, lower crop yields and the additional land needed for similar yields are major obstacles for organic farming to benefit biodiversity conservation. When biodiversity benefits are measured per unit of land necessary for a defined agricultural output or yield and not simply per unit of agricultural land , the biodiversity benefits of organic farming can disappear. Globally and across all major crops, organic farming yields are lower by 19–25%. Vegetables and cereals show the highest yield gaps, with up to 50% yield decrease in wheat; however, yields of fruits and oil seed crops are not lower. Moreover, it is a myth that organic farms principally waive pesticides. Pesticides are allowed under organic labels as long as they are derived from natural substances rather than synthetic ones. Widespread insecticides used in organic farming include natural pyrethrin, derived from chrysanthemum, and azadirachtin from the Asian neem tree.

Copper sulfate is often applied to cope with fungal and bacterial diseases, for example, in vineyards, aeroponic tower garden system orchards, and vegetables, but is persistent and accumulates in soils.While the vast majority of organic arable crops are rarely treated with pesticides, potatoes, vegetables, hops, grapes, and other fruits are regularly and heavily treated with natural pesticides. For instance, spraying in organic grapes or apples has been shown to be just 20% less but can also be more than in conventional fields. Overall, this suggests that smart application strategies for pesticide use are needed regardless of organic or conventional agricultural systems. Similarly, harmful overfertilisation occurs not only with mineral fertilizers, but also with manure. Importantly, organic farming enhances only a limited spectrum of species. In particular, noncrop plants benefit due to missing herbicides, whereas more mobile, landscape-dependent insect populations benefit less. Furthermore, reduced applications of agrochemicals enhance common insect species associated with agriculture, but not the less common species associated with a great diversity of semi-natural habitats. These semi-natural habitats include hedges, herbaceous field boundaries, and traditional, uneconomic agroecosystems such as calcareous grasslands and orchard meadows. In fact, a meta-analysis of agrienvironment schemes found that off-field measures, such as field margins and hedgerows, are more than twice as effective in promoting biodiversity as in-field measures such as organic management . For example, higher farmland habitat diversity, but not conversion to organic farming, increases butterfly diversity on farms by ~50%. Increasing hedge length per field by 250 m raises bird diversity from one to 12 species, whereas conversion from conventional to organic farming increased species richness by only 50%. Lastly, current organic production is increasingly intensified, specialised, and often far away from the idealism and enthusiasm of the original organic movement .

In contrast to the small and diversified family farms that characterised the beginning of the organic movement, modern organic arable fields can be huge monocultures, resembling conventional fields. Organic vegetables often come from sterile greenhouse blocks or large-scale cultures under plastic sheets, covering entire landscapes. The Almeria Province is the heart of Europe’s intensive agriculture, where >50% of fruits and vegetables are grown under plastic sheets, with the proportion of organic farming increasing over the last decade from 1.4% to 10.3%. Further examples of landscape-damaging practices of organic production include vegetables that are produced in greenhouse blocks, favourably doubling yields by intensification and extending growing seasons, but at high cost for biodiversity. Overall, pesticide use, limited species benefits, and the above intensification suggest that certified organic production is not the silver bullet for current biodiversity conservation and agricultural production.Diversifying agricultural systems is key for the restoration of biodiversity and associated ecosystem services, such as pollination, and biological pest and weed control.Agricultural land, in particular in Europe and North America, is increasingly shaped by large mono-cultures and short crop rotations to simplify production techniques and to specialise on the best-selling products. Diverse crop rotations are increasingly missing or dominated by just one crop , or only up to three crop species . These simplified crop rotations deplete soils, and promote pest infestations, resistance through repeated pesticide applications, and the risk of resource bottlenecks for pollinators and biocontrol agents; all of which also increase the risk of yield declines. In contrast, resource continuity provided by a mixed pattern of crops, alone or combined with land-sharing practices, such as wildflower strips, effectively increases the stability of ecosystem services, such as pollination and biological pest control.

Globally, crop rotations are only 15% longer in organic than conventional farming . Still, organic farms have on average 48% higher crop species richness . Diversification of organic farming by multi-cropping and diversified crop rotations may reduce the yield gap to just 8–9%. However, crop rotations could be longer, for example, over at least a 7-year period , but there is little uptake in both organic and conventional agriculture. Instead, the current trend in organic farming is, similar to conventional agriculture, to specialise and intensify. Hence, measures to enhance biodiversity include temporal and spatial crop diversification, as reported from both temperate and tropical regions, but also cover crops or green manure, agroforestry, that is, combining trees and crops, or crop–livestock systems and other biodiversity-friendly measures. semi-natural habitats adjacent to croplands may include linear or patchy landscape elements, such as hedges and woody or herbaceous patches, facilitate spillover to small fields and enhance on-farm biodiversity. However, targeted on-farm measures to restore biodiversity are not mandatory in any organic certification scheme.We emphasise the key role of landscape-level species pools and suggest two major biodiversity friendly measures at the landscape scale that are missing in organic certification and agri-environmental EU policies. Landscape changes often provide much larger biodiversity benefits than the incentivised changes of local management. First, we provide evidence for the need to restore semi-natural habitats in simplified landscapes. Second, we focus on augmenting landscape heterogeneity through small and diversified crop fields.Local field or farm biodiversity is determined by the available pool of populations and species in the surrounding landscapes. In structurally poor, simplified landscapes, biodiversity is reduced so that only few species can be locally expected – independent of the type of local management . For example, current dramatic insect declines in German grasslands were mainly observed in simplified landscapes dominated by annual crops, irrespective of the local intensification level. This spatial scale mismatch, that is, the usual focus on local management instead of managing landscapes and their species pools, needs to be addressed for successfully redesigning organic certification schemes and policy instruments for biodiversity conservation.

Landscape complexity, that is, the amount of semi-natural habitats in the agricultural landscape, is well known to increase species pools, linking resources and populations of cropland and natural area, although effects are variable and taxon specific. For example, wild bee richness in standardised field margin strips doubles when landscape-wide habitat increases from 10% to 40%. Complex landscapes also enhance local availability of key predators and parasitoids for pest control,including a tenfold increase in parasitism of the pollen beetle, halving oil seed rape damage. Interestingly, 29% of the local species richness in protected calcareous grasslands, which are among the most species rich habitats in Central Europe, is lost when the percentage of arable land in the surrounding landscape increases from 10% to 80%. Complex landscapes support a broader range of resources and microclimates, thereby counteracting biotic homogenisation and promoting stability of population dynamics. There is evidence that a 20% threshold level of semi-natural habitat in agricultural landscapes is key to biodiversity maintenance. According to percolation theory, habitat loss below 20% causes disproportionally high losses in patch connectivity. This can disrupt exchange of organisms across the landscape, and therefore, their survival probability. Connectivity loss may be also counterbalanced by reduced field sizes per landscape as well as crop diversification, but quantification of these effects needs further research. In Europe, maintaining landscape complexity with semi-natural habitats needs to consider the traditional, uneconomic agroeco-systems that are threatened from agricultural intensification or abandonment, such as orchard meadows and dry grasslands.Although increasing the amount of semi-natural habitat in the landscape can mitigate biodiversity loss,dutch buckets for sale rising land prices make semi-natural habitat an expensive good that is difficult to maintain, yet alone to increase. Consequently, the idea has gained momentum that raising landscape wide heterogeneity of the crop mosaic may also exhibit major positive effects on biodiversity, without compromising the availability of agricultural land. A recent study, based on 435 landscapes across eight regions, showed that increasing configurational cropland heterogeneity by decreasing field size can be even as beneficial for multi-trophic diversity as increasing semi-natural habitat.

Reducing size of crop fields from 5 to 2.8 ha enhanced as many species as increasing semi-natural habitat from 0.5 to 11% . This was not just due to the increase in common grassy field margin strips along crop fields, as there was also a positive effect of increasing crop edges per se. Higher field edge densities can result in up to five times the number of wild bees and higher fruit set in an agricultural landscape and also reduces pest infestation. These patterns have been quantified in the mosaic landscapes of Europe, but the situation may be different in largescale regions with large fields and farms, for example, found in North America or Brazil. Batáry et al. found also high biodiversity benefits of small-scale over large-scale agriculture, which are on par or even higher than the biodiversity benefits from converting conventional to organic agriculture . Independent of field size, organic farming increased biodiversity, but also halved cereal yield levels, compared to conventional farms. However, profit per farmland area was 50% higher on 20-ha than 3-ha fields, due to the lower costs for managing large fields. The higher costs for managing small fields include also higher risks for compacted soil, higher crop damage, and growth heterogeneity due to the increase of edges and headland. However, conversion to long, narrow fields can minimise headland, while biodiversity enhancement is optimised through long margins, promoting ecosystem services through spillover of crop pollinators as well as predators and parasitoids in temperate and tropical regions. Furthermore, small fields allow better adaptation of crop diversification to local heterogeneity, for example in soil quality, and may reduce the risk of pest outbreaks, typical for large areas of monocultures . Increasing the number of crop types had also a positive effect on landscape-level biodiversity, but only in landscapes with >11% of semi-natural habitat. Pest densities are typically lower in landscapes with higher crop diversity, while monocultural, maize-dominated landscape are of little value for pollinators.According to the United Nations, the population of the world is expected to grow in the next century, which in turn encourages the development of innovative techniques to ensure agricultural sustainability. Agriculture on productive land is threatened not only by high levels of urbanization, uneven water distribution, and inclement weather, but also is threats to biodiversity that have unfavorable environmental impacts. Due to the anticipated drastic population growth and constraints on resources in the upcoming decades, only 10% of the demand for food is estimated to be met by expansion of productive lands, with the remainder relying on new techniques that can achieve higher yields. Therefore, developing novel methods to augment the ratio of crop production over used land is a vital issue. In recent years, the indoor vertical farming systems with artificial light are found to be a viable solution to resolve the in-creasing demands of future agricultural products. The IVFS are promising alternatives to open field or greenhouse agriculture because they have precisely monitoring environmental parameters and are insensitive to outdoor climates, which can boost annual sales volume per unit area up to 100 times compared to that of open lands. Furthermore, employment of light emitting diodes as light sources can initiate and sustain photosynthesis reactions and the optical wavelength, light intensity, and radiation intervals can further enhance growth quality.

Through scientific improvement of land productivity and labor productivity to ensure a long-term and stable increase in food production capacity and strengthen the base to cope with the uncertainties of global climate change. 3) Enhancing social benefit is the emphasis of SICLU. It requires increasing attention to social issues and human welfare brought by the cultivated land use, such as dietary needs, waste reduction, market transactions, distributive justice. In particular, paying more attention to the cultivated land users’ needs in microfinance and agricultural technology. By strengthening policy publicity, supervision and guidance to form a restraint mechanism for saving and intensive land use and an encouragement mechanism for consciously protecting the environment. From the perspective of participants and external social and economic environment, the SICLU goals further strengthen the value responses and linkages of agriculture, countryside and farmers. There are the interest connections between countryside and agriculture at the level of industrial development, the element exchanges between agriculture and farmers at the level of input/output, and the same pursuits between farmers and countryside at the level of environmental demand. They mean rural human settlement environment demands that the cultivated land use should not be degraded of ecological environment, agricultural sustainable development has set up green and efficient resource saving conditions for the cultivated land use, and farmers’ life needs and welfare guarantee promote the intensification of management through the transformation of production and life style.

SICLU will help cement the foundation of agriculture, foster a new type of professional farmers, fodder system for sale make rural areas more livable, and ultimately form a new development pattern featuring efficient agriculture, rich farmers and beautiful countryside. In response to the relationship between goals and connotations of SICLU. 1) Intensive management, high yield efficiency and resource saving can all optimize economic benefit. Resource saving, non-degradation of the ecological environment and intensive management can all guarantee ecological benefit. High yield efficiency, resource saving, non-degradation of the ecological environment and social sustainability can all enhance social benefit. 2) SICLU is to balance and optimize the comprehensive benefits of economy, ecology, and society in order to identify the optimal solution and maintain a long-term stable dynamic balance. The higher level of SICLU is not the maximization of the five connotations simultaneously, but the maximization of the comprehensive benefits and the maintenance of a dynamic balance. It is difficult to achieve the optimal solution of ecological, economic and social benefits by placing too much emphasis on one or several aspects while ignoring other aspects. Cultivated land is the important livelihood capitals of farming households.Differences in the use behaviors of farming households are the main factors affecting the SICLU. The farming households’ livelihood transition is a long-term gradual evolution process from a traditional agricultural livelihood type to non-agricultural or agricultural specialization. In this process, the external environment and resource endowment of cultivated land affect the direction of farming households’ livelihood transition by influencing the accumulation and survival of farming households’ livelihood capitals.

Livelihood transition will indirectly change farming households’ cultivated land dependence and land consciousness, affect cultivated land use behaviors, and then affect the level of SICLU, and feedback the progress of farming households’ livelihood transition. In terms of SICLU connotations, farming households are “Economic Man” of bounded rationality, they are more inclined to pursue the maximization of short term interests, and are willing to pay more attention to the economic benefit of cultivated land use, and tend to ignore the ecological benefit and social benefit. That is to say, in the process of direct cultivated land use in pursuit of high yield efficiency through the means of intensive management, farming households indirectly assume the responsibility of resource conservation and non-degradation of ecological environment, and make contributions to social food security and sustainable resource protection. Energy is involved in the structure and function of the entire cultivated land use, among which solar energy is the basis of all forms of energy on Earth. Each farming household belongs to a relatively independent cultivated land use system , and the emergy analysis can cover most input sources and material outputs in the process of cultivated land use by farming households. Therefore, considering each farming household as one unit, by converting different concepts, categories, energy levels, and other incomparable energies and materials into the same standard solar emergy, a SICLU evaluation can be performed. It is helpful to quantitatively analyze the complex energy, material, currency, and information flow in the complex system of nature economy-society in order to quantitatively measure the structural and functional characteristics of cultivated land use and more comprehensively and objectively measure the ecological, economic, and social benefits of cultivated land use dominated by different household livelihood types . The energy inputs of cultivated land use mainly include renewable environmental resources, non-renewable environment inputs, nonrenewable industrial auxiliary energy, and renewable organic energy.

Accompanied by inevitable waste and losses , part of the energy entering the system is stored in the topsoil, most of which participates in cultivated land use and is converted into crop energy . Another part of the energy is stored by seed retention, straw turnover, and other methods. Most agricultural crops enter the economic market to gain profits, which are used to purchase new non-renewable auxiliary industrial energy and renewable organic energy for use in the next production cycle. With reference to related emergy analysis research and the representation of emergy computation in Emergy Analysis of Ecological Economic System by Lan Shengfang et al, the materials, energy, and services involved in the inputs and outputs of cultivated land use can be converted into solar emjoules according to Equations – . According to the statistics, 333 farming households in the sample made use of cultivated land in 2019. According to the emergy overview of the cultivated land use of 333 farming households , the renewable environmental resources mainly included rainwater chemical energy and earth rotational energy. The energy of non-renewable topsoil lost was relatively low because the soil texture is mostly cinnamon soil, and soil erosion is generally due to mild or moderate water erosion in Qufu County. The auxiliary inputs obtained by purchase were obviously higher. They were the most important input sources in cultivated land use, as compared with the environmental inputs obtained free of charge. Specifically, the non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs primarily included the inputs of increasing production and saving labor, while renewable organic auxiliary inputs were mainly the increasing production inputs.

The non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs, which mainly consisted of fertilizer, mechanical power, and pesticides, were higher than that of renewable organic inputs, which primarily included labor, straw, and seeds. Regarding non-renewable industrial auxiliary inputs, the fertilizer and machinery were relatively higher, whereas for organic auxiliary inputs, the labor and straw were higher. In terms of agricultural output, the outputs of grain crops were significantly higher than that of cash crops. In addition, auxiliary inputs inevitably produces waste in the process of cultivated land use, thereby reducing its use efficiency. Fertilizers and pesticides were the main sources of waste loss. According to the SICLU evaluation system, it is assumed that the SII is approximately 2.38 when the five criterion indices reach a maximum of 1. However, it is difficult to reach this the level in actual cultivated land use. With the above theoretical analysis of SICLU, there are checks and balances and coordination among the five connotations. For example, high-efficiency output is the most direct purpose of farming households’ cultivated land use, and intensive management is the desirable main method to obtain high-yield output under existing resource conditions, which can be embodied via changes in input structure and cultivated land use management, as well as changes in the degree of ecological environment interference and the impact on social and economic development. Regarding inputs, an increase in the management intensive criterion index indicates an increase in the artificial auxiliary inputs, wherein the increase in material inputs is the most direct. Meanwhile, an increase in industrial auxiliary inputs indicates an increase in non-renewable inputs and waste loss, causing negative impacts on resource savings and the ecological environment. If the two criterion indices of resource savings and non-degradation of ecological environment are increased while the external natural environment remains unchanged, it is necessary to reduce the auxiliary inputs applied externally, which will weaken the criterion index of high yield efficiency, further affecting the criterion index of social sustainability. Therefore, it is necessary to lower the industrial auxiliary inputs and increase renewable organic function inputs. However, the industrial auxiliary inputs cannot be lowered on a large scale because of its irreplaceable nature in agricultural production. In addition, reducing the inputs of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and even agricultural machinery means that more labor inputs are required, thereby reducing cultivating efficiency and affecting the criterion index of management intensification.

Therefore, because of the actual use of cultivated land and the coordination and balance among the SICLU connotations, the criterion indices cannot reach their maxima simultaneously, fodder growing system which is consistent with the law of diminishing marginal returns. This is consistent with the purpose of SICLU that is not to simultaneously maximize the ecological, economic, and social benefits, but to obtain a solution that maintains a dynamic balance in order to maximize the compound benefits. In addition, differences exist in not only the SII values but also the internal structure among the non-SI, low-SI, medium-SI, and high-SI. The SII structures summarized in Table 3 reveal the average value of the criterion indices under different SICLU levels. Note that its pentagon has a somewhat regular shape, while the pentagons formed by each individual farming household have more abnormal shapes. The irregular pentagons also verify the checks and balances and coordination among the five connotations. Nevertheless, they effectively reflect differences in cultivated land use under different SII values. Assuming that the SI levels of the sample farming households are in a dynamic process of continuous improvement, it can be speculated that the SICLU evolved from intensive dominance to sustainable dominance as development changed from low to high levels. These results demonstrated substantial economic benefit, but the ecological benefit and social benefit remain in their early stages. With increasing SICLU, economic benefit growth will slow and even stagnation, ecological benefit and social benefit will begin to appear until a relative equilibrium is reached. According to the SICLU evaluation structure of the sample farming households with different farming households’ livelihood types , the average values of SIY’ and SIM’ were high, followed by the SIR’, SIE’, and SIS’. In particular, the average value SIY’ of agricultural professional farming households was significantly higher than the others, the average values of SIM’ and SIS’ were relatively higher, and the SIE’ and SIR’ were significantly lower, revealing an obvious imbalance. The relatively higher SII can primarily be attributed to the contribution of SIY’. Theoretically, these results denote an intensive and low sustainable model, but this may not be the case in practice. Because the agricultural-professional farming households had a large management scale, a high degree of agricultural mechanization, high farming efficiency and agricultural productivity, and lower labor inputs, as compared with the other types, it can achieve lower renewable organic inputs, and higher non-renewable and environmental load ratios, making its average value of SIE’ relatively low. Moreover, although the SIE’ value was relatively low, there was a strong correlation between SIS’ and SIY’ and SIE’, and the SIS’ was relatively high because of the high SIY’. However, agricultural-professional farming households had lower SIR’ than other farming household types, indicating that their dependence on non-renewable resources was still strong. This may also explain why the cultivated land use of agricultural-professional farming households were mostly at a medium-SI level, not a high-SI level. The SIE’ and SIR’ could be improved by improving the proportional relationship of inputs, moderately reducing the inputs of non-renewable resources, such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and increasing the renewable ratio by reducing non-renewable auxiliary inputs. However, for agricultural-professional farming households, agricultural income is the main source of family earnings and main purpose. Thus, although their dependence on cultivated land was the strongest, their consciousness of land protection was weaker than that of traditional agricultural farming households.

The first alternative system is the semi-intensive system. The main goal in this system is to improve the provision of private goods, i.e. increased meat production and improved labor conditions. Several enabling conditions at farm level were identified to reach this end . This alternative system would fit better in the southernmost and flat areas where crop diversification is easier to implement. The second alternative system is the high-tech extensive system. The aim is to improve farms’ profitability by reducing feeding costs based on an improved pasture management. Participants highlighted the need for the innovation in herd geo-location, weather information and wild fauna surveillance . In addition, subsidies are essential in this system to support the provision of public goods as well as a legal framework to regulate and protect the access to land for grazing purposes. This alternative system would be more suitable in the northernmost and mountainous locations, where there are more pasture lands and geography makes other types of farming systems less appropriate. Current challenges, such as the reduced consumption of lamb meat by consumers, the lack of workforce and the increasing feeding costs,bato bucket are still important in the future alternative systems.

The feeding costs are more important in the semi-intensive alternative system due to a greater dependency of feed inputs and lower dependency on the availability of pastures. On the other hand, wild fauna attacks will only pose a challenge in the high-tech extensive alternative system. In the alternative systems, all main functions are expected to increase in a moderate way . The gross margins would increase in both systems, although margins seem to differ depending on the degree of intensification or extensification of the farms, as well as the areas where the farms are located. The increase in gross margin in both systems is the main change that is expected to allow to increase the number of sheep and farms, and are therefore moving away from other critical thresholds as well. The location of the farm determines the agro-ecological potential and the access to markets . Thus, the semi-intensive alternative system is more likely in the flat areas where pastures are more scarce and payments for the less favorable areas are not applicable . In the high-tech extensive alternative system, the production is not expected to change. However, its performance in less favored areas and the provision of public goods services is supported by European subsidies that could increase the current margins. Greater gross margins would lead to a greater number of farms in the farming system, although this increase would be limited by the access to lands in the high-tech extensive system. The increase of the number of sheep is expected in both alternative systems, although this increment would be greater in the high-tech extensive alternative system. According to participants the lower production in this system would be compensated with greater herd sizes.

While some resilience attributes of the farming system are expected to improve in both alternative systems, participants agreed that all the resilience attributes of the FS could improve in the high-tech extensive system . The “social self-organization” resilience attribute in the high-tech extensive system would be improved as cooperation is needed to manage pastures and herds; it can also be argued that “production coupled to the local and natural capital” will improve as herd feeding will be coupled to the availability of pasture lands; and “diverse policies” will be enhanced as new policies will be tailored to support the provision of the public goods provided by the farming system. Moving towards the semi-intensive alternative scenario could constrain the resilience attributes “production coupled to the local and natural capital” and “diverse policies” leading to a deeper unbalance between the economic, social and environmental dimensions. Several current strategies, with currently low implementation levels, could be enhanced in the alternative systems. Some current strategies are compatible with the alternative farming systems. These strategies are mainly oriented to the economic domain, specifically related to the on-farm economic administration . Moreover, there were several new strategies identified during the workshop that match with current strategies .

Most of these strategies are economic strategies such as opening new marketing channels and developing new financial products and sales contracts that contribute to increase the robustness of the farming system to face hard times. Some institutional strategies are related to the public awareness campaigns about the positive contribution of the extensive sheep farming system to nature conservation and health. In the system, public awareness is expected to stimulate lamb meat consumption, which results in improved incomes. Public awareness is also expected to improve regulations for improving management of pastures, which in turn could lead to even more public awareness. Most of the strategies proposed in the workshop are applicable for both systems and are mainly related to the need for improved technologies and innovation . The number of proposed strategies was higher for the high-tech extensive system. The extra strategies in this system relate to the environmental and social domains, due to its more environmental-based and social nature. Institutional changes need to be made that improve the access to lands and the management of pasture lands, and the recognition of the farming system’s contribution to the conservation of natural resources. This is expected to pay off in the economic domain, through subsidies and the lower feeding costs due to the use of pastures. Social measures are related to the promotion of generational renewal, which would increase the workforce in the farming system.

The workforce availability improves the farmers’ quality of life, stimulating the attractiveness of the farming system. The quality of life is also improved with the implementation of new technology related to management of pastures and animal handling – in the semi-intensive alternative system the animal handling strategies are very important, mainly related to sanitary and production issues. The technology and innovation requires the cooperation between different actors in the exchange of knowledge and training in the technology . The cooperation between farmers is also expected to increase the bargaining power and margins. In any case, strategies regarding innovation and cooperation among system actors would be necessary, no matter what future system unfolds . It should be noted that the import of feed in the semi-intensive system reduces the coupling of production with local and natural resources. This could result in an opposite direction where, because of a worsening public image, less meat is consumed and regulations are getting stricter. In both alternative systems, several strategies are oriented to technology implementation. The implementation of new technology generally does not allow for experimentation because of the great investments involved in new technology. For instance, in the high-tech extensive system the use of satellite images or the GPS per ewe is expensive. In the semi-intensive system, the replacement of more prolific ewes requires high investments. Strategies with low investment costs are related to the sanitary prevention, which lend robustness to the farming system , or the coordination among actors. The probability of unfolding the high-tech extensive alternative system is expected to be larger than that of the semi-intensive system. The reason is that the semi-intensive system is going to compete with other intensive farming systems that are more profitable.

The high-tech extensive system might highlight its importance in the contribution to the public goods and the conservation of the local breed Rasa aragonesa. As mentioned before, the greater availability of pastures makes the high-tech extensive system more suitable to mid-mountain areas. Farmers mentioned the high-tech extensive system as the preferable option in the future but also the most complicated to accomplish, especially without supporting policies in place. Besides, some of the technology for pasture lands and herds management is still in a development phase. In contrast, the lower presence of pastures in flat areas of the farming system make the semi-intensive systems more appropriate in those areas. Participants pointed out that both alternative systems could attract young people to the farming system. Riedel et al. have related young farmers to a greater dynamism and technology adoption in the ovine production system and to the reduction of shepherding. Based on the challenges, enabling conditions and strategies of the current and alternative systems, the extensive ovine farming system in the province of Huesca seems to be most compatible with a scenario on a pathway to higher sustainability with improved attention for the maintenance of natural resources , especially in the case of a high-tech extensive system. Compatibility with Eur-Agri-SSP1 is largely due to the increment of support for environmental services. As the current system is close to collapse, the compatibility with a scenario where the status quo is maintained as much as possible for the current state is limited. The establishment of the semi-intensive system is more compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP2 due to its production orientation. Eur-Agri-SSP3, with regional rivalry leading to amongst others slow technological process, is moderately to strongly incompatible with the current system and the alternative systems. In Eur-Agri-SSP3, specifically for the semi-intensive system, the lack of internationalization of markets, and for the high-tech extensive system the lack of environmental services valorization reduces compatibility. The semi-intensification of the farming system is evaluated as the only alternative system moderately compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP4, a scenario driven primarily by increasing social inequality, and Eur-Agri-SSP5, dutch bucket hydroponic a scenario primarily driven by improvements in technology.

The high-tech extensive system is even less compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP4 and EurAgri-SSP5 than the current system. Although the high-tech extensive system is most compatible with Eur-Agri-SSP1, the semi-intensive system seems the safest bet regarding its overall compatibility with all Eur-AgriSSPs .The outcome of the workshop suggested that, currently, the social, economic and environmental performance of extensive sheep farming system in Huesca, Spain is poor and declining. This is a common trend in Europe. Strijker explained that increasing opportunities outside agriculture, lower product prices, and higher land prices explained the continuous decline of extensive livestock grazing systems in several rural areas across Europe. Bernu´es et al. found that the lack of generational succession and the high opportunity cost of labour are also drivers of the disappearance of livestock farming in European Mediterranean countries. Most challenges, system functions and resilience attributes seem to be at or beyond critical thresholds, indicating simultaneously low sustainability and low resilience levels. Interactions between critical thresholds of challenges, functions and resilience attributes across levels and domains are perceived to be present. This emphasizes the importance of including multiple levels and domains when studying the sustainability and resilience of farming systems. This also emphasizes the complementarity between sustainability and resilience, albeit in a negative sense. Overall, the effect of exceeding thresholds is expected to strongly reduce system performance in terms of sustainability and resilience. Economic viability at farm level plays a pivotal role regarding interacting thresholds. Participants indicated that exceeding the critical threshold for gross margin would result in a collapse of the farming system. This supports the idea that interacting indicators being close to critical thresholds at lower levels increase the vulnerability of the focal system . Interestingly, the level of gross margin is artificially maintained by subsidies that farms receive. This suggests a current focus on mainly economic sustainability, which in the long run may not be sustainable at all: subsidies may keep the fast responding “gross margin” away from critical thresholds, while the indicators relating to slower processes such as declining access to pastures in the environmental domain and lower attractiveness of the countryside in the social domain are not countered. Amalgamation of farms and livestock partly slows down the decline in sheep numbers and subsequent lower maintenance of the landscape. However, in the absence of subsidies and the limitations in managing huge herds, amalgamation is no longer profitable, which explains why participants expected a collapse. Biggs et al. mention that large shifts in socio-ecological systems are uncommon. The provisioning of agricultural subsidies could be seen as a main reason for continuing the status quo in some other agricultural systems in Europe as well.

The indices of specific identity according to Jaccard were also calculated, expressing the concordance of the species composition of the zoocenoses compared to each other. Within the evaluation of individual years, types of management systems and crops, in 2018 the value was 75.00%, in 2019 their value represented 44.00% and in 2020 it was 50.00%. The total value with the comparison of both types of management for the observed period reached the value of 60.00%. Calculated values of dominance identity according to Renkonen, when comparing ecological vs integrated management for 2018 were 87.53%, in 2019 they were 92.55% and in 2020 they were 83.96%. The average comparison summary of the identity of dominance for the observed period of ecological vs integrated management represents 90.39%. No significant differences were observed when comparing values of diversity index according to Shannon-Weaver. The value for the ecological type was 0.9957 and for the integrated 1.0184, which is realistic when comparing farming in both types of agrocenoses. In terms of the ecological demands of individual species, the communities consisted mainly of species typical to lowland farmland ecosystems, where these species occur mainly in close coexistence of their reproductive cycle, nft hydroponic the presence of the relevant crop and management.

Subsequently, their occurrence is also influenced by local soil and moisture conditions, but it can be stated that the presence of the monitored Carabidae family is a reflection of relatively complex relationships taking place in agroecosystems. It is typical for species of the Carabidae family that they either have fully developed wings, resp. wings are completely or partially reduced. This is associated with restriction or complete loss of movement, which plays an important role in the migration of individuals to the environment. 85% of macropterous and only 15% of brachypteran species were present in the monitored group, which is evidence of a relatively large migration of individuals. When evaluating ecological valence and their association with the environment, 19 species can be classified as eurytopic, 4 for xerophilic, 3 for hygrophilic and 1 species acts as a halobiont. Based on a graphical comparison of ecological vs integrated farming system, using the f-test shows that the ecological type of farming recorded a higher number of Carabidae individuals on the monitored crops, with the exception of Harpalus rufipes on Medica sativa. It can be stated that on the basis of the f-test, which shows zero hypothesis results, the ecological impact of farming within the monitored crops was significant. Based on the analysis of variance , which expresses a graphical comparison of both types of farming, the results were in favor of the ecological type, which represents a higher abundance in all crops.Based on the results obtained, it can be stated that loss of biodiversity has now become a global problem. Much of the biodiversity of terrestrial ecosystems is ‘‘hidden” in the soil.

Using an experimental system to change soil levels of biodiversity and community composition has shown that declining numbers of soil organisms cause a reduction in multiple ecosystem functions, including biodiversity, suggesting that biodiversity is a key resource for ecosystem functioning . Carabids are efficient bio-indicators in terrestrial ecosystems because of their adaptability and ability to colonize almost all terrestrial habitats and geographical locations, their quick response to environmental changes, the ease in collecting them, and their relatively stable taxonomy. They are also useful organisms in agroecosystems due to their role as predators of crop insect pests and slugs, thus reducing their populations . Preserving high biodiversity in agroecosystems makes agricultural production more sustainable and economically viable. Which is also confirmed by the results we found, when during the monitored period 7 801 adult carabides belonging to 26 species were recorded. Intensified production, increased use of pesticides and fertilizers are under constant criticism. Agriculture is looking for other biological and agrotechnical methods to meet the requirements of global food production . Agricultural ecosystems are exposed to heavy burden during the year, however the composition of epigeic groups shows significant stability and homogeneity. The species richness of agroecosystems almost always exceeds the species richness of natural, resp. semi-natural landscape . Carabidae, with their abundance and functionality, represent a dominant group involved in reducing the number of pests in agroecosystems .

Carabidae are a taxonomically stable and well studied family, because of their specific life strategies and ecological preferences in terms of humidity, temperature, shading, soil and vegetation . They are efficient bio-indicators in terrestrial ecosystems because of their adaptability and ability to colonize almost all terrestrial habitats and geographical locations, their quick response to environmental changes, the ease of collecting them, and their relatively stable taxonomy . The total number of Carabidae in both types of farming is also 7 801 individuals, of which 4 784 were in organic and 3 017 in integrated farming.The Carabidae, Staphylinidae, Coccinelidae families are natural enemies of aphids and play an important role in agroecosystems. Predatory beetles play their role primarily in ecologically grown crops . By their presence, Carabidae species reflect the current topical, environmental and trophic conditions of agroecosystems, at the same time they act as part of the transport mechanisms of substances and energy and react sensitively to changes in agroecosystems and are a proven model group. Thanks to their biodiversity, they are suitable for detecting the effects of natural and anthropogenic disturbances . There are seventy-nine species of ground beetles recorded at the study sites of Slovakia according to authors . Ecological management systems are characterized by a larger floristic area and consequently faunistic biodiversity, compared to integrated systems, which provide suitable conditions especially for shade-loving species. However, it can not be excluded that if integrated systems are managed properly, they can increase biodiversity . The level of biodiversity of agroecosystems depends on vegetation cover, sowing process, management intensity, and also on factors that contributed to the influence of biodiversity within the monitored types of management, which is confirmed by our findings . Most Carabidae species belong to the group of predatory generalists or polyphagous, but are also narrow within this family specialists who prefer specific prey or plant food .

The distribution of present species is applied by the temperature, soil type, humidity, trophic relationships, sufficient food, mutual competition and all of it varies depending on the nature of the biotope. In addition to natural factors, an anthropogenic factor is also applied in agroecosystems, e.g. in the form of tillage, crop structure, cultivated crop, and applied inputs . It is necessary to highlight the rich network of their trophic relationships and ties, which is the main mechanism that ensures the balance of monitored agroecosystems. In terms of the ecological demands of individual species, their communities consisted mainly of species typical of lowland field ecosystems, where these species occur mainly in close coincidence of their reproductive cycle, the presence of the relevant crops and management. Subsequently, their presence is also influenced by local soil and moisture conditions, but it can be stated that the presence of the monitored Carabidae family is a reflection of relatively complex ongoing relationships in agroecosystems. It can be stated that Carabidae species are effective bioindicators within agroecosystems, they are adaptable, able to colonize all terrestrial habitats and at the same time they are useful organisms in agroecosystems, also due to their role as predators of cultivated plant pests, thus reducing their populations. An important role also belongs to the other granivorous, consuming weed seeds. They perform ecosystem services in the form of pest control and weed seed destruction . Harpalus rufipes was the eudominant species in all variants. It can migrate both by ground and by air, enabling large aggregations to form in areas with optimal hydrothermal regime and high aggregations of food . Harpalus rufipes is a trans-palearctic, polyzonal, habitat generalist, and is usually the most numerous ground beetle species in agricultural ecosystems and forest plantations . Due to the complex of adaptations and migratory abilities, it achieves the mentioned high values of abundance. It can be found in an extremely wide range of terrestrial ecosystems, with a particularly high population inhabiting an anthropogenically transformed environment. It is distinctive by the consumption of a wide range of foods, it is distributed in Central and Eastern Europe and was introduced to North America. Under the influence of various factors, this species of ground beetles can form aggregations up to tens and hundreds of individuals per square meter.Theabundance of carabids was not significantly different under the two management systems.

Harpalus rufipes and Poecilus cupreus were the most captured species. These results coincide with the data collected across Europe by other authors . Despite the disruptions of agricultural operations, the populations of carabids in arable crops have been found to be relatively constant. Pitfall trapping conducted from 1973 to 1981 in an arable field showed that the peak capture of H. rufipes, H. aeneus, P. madidus, P. melanarius and N. brevicollis remained relatively constant . The majority of species inhabiting agricultural fields have greater dispersal ability, often by flight, nft system are generally eurytopic, and are thus better adapted to living in unstable or temporary habitats. Species typical to arable fields are included in this group . Agricultural practices such as the application of insecticides that remove prey, or habitat destruction, may have a suffificient impact to create unfavourable conditions for Carabidae, but these impacts may not be long lasting, due to reinvasion or relatively quick dispersal distribution. In recent years the declining value of arable crops, combined with pressure from environmental organisations and consumer groups, has driven farmers to look more closely at integrated crop management and integrated farming techniques. Lower insecticide usage and choice of selective insecticides, non-inversion tillage and augmenting non-crop habitat are likely to have the greatest impact on Carabidae . Carabids have frequently been used to compare biodiversity in ecological and integrated management systems. Much evidence shows how agroecological practices can mean that ecological systems have less of an impact on carabid habitats than integrated ones. Some soil management practices such as reduced tillage or cover cropping can considerably influence the effects of organic management on carabid biodiversity . The Shannon-Weaver index, which we consider sufficient, was used to evaluate species diversity. However, species diversity can also be assessed using the Hill index . The susceptibility of some carabid species to insecticides, herbicide use through modification of plant cover and microclimate, and soil cultivation, has ensured that they are also frequently monitored in farming system studies. Studies have frequently found that differences between farming systems are relatively small compared to results between multiple years, fields and farms systems. This is because carabids exhibit considerable natural temporal and spatial variation . Some soil management practices such as reduced tillage or cover cropping can considerably influence the effects of organic management on carabid biodiversity. Normally, low-input practices make organic systems overall more eco-friendly and sustainable than conventional ones, although sustainability is important, not only from a short-term perspective, but also taking into account a long timeline.Ground beetles living in anthropogenic environments have a wider environmental tolerance than species in natural habitats. They achieve high local density due to anthropogenic activities such as agriculture, urbanization or forestry .

The interview was conducted by starting with a conversation to retrieve some basic information, such as the socio-structural characteristics of the farm, and it then proceeded to the Q sorting phase. This was carried out by making a sign with the grid, which was completely white so as not to influence the respondents, and providing them cards with statements.Each interview lasted between 45 minutes and 90 minutes. The interviews were carried out based on the respondents’ knowledge of PFTs, and they were conducted during three agricultural fairs, one in Bologna , one in Rome and one in Matera . The interviews were conducted in a face-to-face manner through the use of a poster. Based on the traditional scheme, this format has favoured the Q sorting phase. The composition of the sample defined itself through the filter question “In my opinion, precision farming is…“, and the number of interviewees was defined a priori by the authors in a manner consistent with Watts and Stenner,who reported that the number of respondents should be less than 70, representing nearly half of the selected items. Phase 4, Q sorting, is the moment when the interview takes place. All participants received detailed instructions to complete the questionnaire together with the statements and a card for the socio-demographic data. Initially, the participants classified the declarations about “In my opinion, precision farming is…” into three groups and subsequently ordered these in slots of an almost normal forced choice distribution of 9 total points on paper , ranging from “completely disagree” to “neutral” to “completely agree” .

In this way, the numbers of the Q sample items are recorded in the slots that replicate the distribution of the items for each of the Q sorts .The QM allows us to identify some common factors in individuals’ perceptions of the PF theme. The intercorrelation matrix was realised through the centroid procedure,flood table translating the solution through the use of varimax rotation, which is considered the best solution for the QM . Subsequently, through the criterion of eigenvalues greater than one , 5 factors were selected, and the characteristics of the factors are presented in Table 2. The five groups of discourses we discovered are shown in Table 3. The factor scores are the result of weighted averages of the values given to each statement during the Q sorting phase. In Table 2, the Z scores are converted into the original scale values to provide a clearer representation . The five discourses were analysed by examining the statements that most represented the discriminating points or the points of contact between the different perspectives. Once this had been done, it was possible to define the discourses as follows: Discourse 1: “The key to success” Members of this group strongly agree that PF is the use of new technological tools in agriculture to increase product quality and yields and that it gives the adopter a competitive advantage. These respondents do not think that PF is too complex for their knowledge or experience, and they do not associate the use of new technological tools with economic risk that is too high for their business. The entrepreneurs in this group do not think that PFTs are technologies that involve only young farmers or that they are a very widespread technology in their territory and in the Italian sector. They agree on the fact that PFT are a technology that supports decisions by monitoring their activity, and they think that PFTs develop in the presence of innovation services.

The members of this group agree on thinking that PFTs are a technology that supports their decisions by monitoring their activity and strongly believe that they would be impossible to use without a computer or an internet connection. They strongly agree with the fact that PF is a strategy that can be pursued only through the development of an environment that sees the collaboration of research institutions, the territory and the agricultural world, and in contrast, they do not consider producer organisations to be a necessary element to achieve it. PFTs are considered an easy-to-use technology that does not involve only young farmers. The farmers in this group do not see PFTs as a suitable technology for large companies, and they do not think that they are difficult to implement without financial support such as bank loans. They strongly disagree with the fact that PF is difficult to enforce in the agroecological context in which they live, and they connect the use of PFTs with major environmental sustainability. Discourse 3: “Something far from me” The entrepreneurs in this group agree that the use of new technological tools in agriculture can increase their yields and the quality of their products. As PF is considered too complex for their knowledge and experience and impossible without a computer or an internet connection, they think that PF requires organisational and structural adaptations that are difficult to implement and that a producer organisation is not enough to practice it. The members of this group do not consider PFTs to be a widespread technology in their territory or in the Italian agricultural sector. PF is not considered relevant to their current practices, and they do not feel that PF could improve the working conditions of the employees in the company. Discourse 4: “I don’t really realise the usefulness” The farmers in this group strongly consider PF to be a practice that fits their business model and that can make their job easier to carry out, even if it is not easy to understand how it works. They are the only respondents to strongly think that PF is a widespread reality in the Italian agricultural sector and that it can develop without the presence of innovation services.

The entrepreneurs in this group consider it the use of new technological tools in agriculture to reduce production costs but not to be more environmentally sustainable, and for them, PF is associated with an excessive economic risk for the company. PF is not considered the use of new technological tools requiring training and information costs or support by economic and training measures. Discourse 5: “Yes, but no thanks” The members of this group consider PFTs to be an easy-to understand technology that is suitable for large companies, but they do not think they are relevant for their current practices or that they are widespread in their territory. They think that PFTs are difficult to implement without financial support and that they requires training and information costs. The necessary structural and organisational adaptations for this kind of activity are considered to be difficult to implement, but the farmers in this group do not consider external collaboration the only way that can be pursued. They strongly disagree with the fact that PF corresponds with the use of new technological tools to be more environmentally sustainable, but they agree with the use of these tools to increase yields. The aim of the work was to understand Italian agricultural entrepreneurs’ perspectives on PF to determine the role and strategic importance that PF tools could have for the sector. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to explore the sphere of the self. To measure the role of farmers’ sphere of the self in the adoption process, this paper proposes the use of the QM to identify discourses that could play a predominant role in the formalisation of the adoption process. From the analysis conducted through a quali-quantitative approach, 5 predominant perspectives that contain and summarise many of the barriers and drivers found in the literature emerged, highlighting how the complexity of use and the understanding of these innovative tools are the most important components from the entrepreneur’s perspective . The perspectives have elements of contact and strong differences. Discourse 1 is the only discourse that sees PFT as something that could give farmers a competitive advantage and the only discourse that sees it feasible when supported by a producer organisation.

Discourse 2 is the only discourse to strongly think that PFTs are a set of technologies that can increase the environmental sustainability of the company, while the others, especially Discourses 4 and 5, strongly disagree with this statement. Discourse 2 is also the only discourse that relies more on collaboration with others, rolling benches especially compared to Discourse 5. Discourse 3 includes those who consider PF too complex for their knowledge and experience and those who see it as the use of new technological tools in agriculture requiring organisational and structural adaptations that are difficult to implement. Their idea that PF is something difficult to achieve without equipment such as computers and the internet is shared with Discourse 2. Discourse 4 includes those who have the highest consideration of PF as a practice that fits their business model even if they have the strongest idea of it as a technology that is not easy to understand, and they are the only farmers to see it as a widespread reality in the Italian agricultural sector. He members of this discourse are the only ones who do not see it as the use of new technological tools in agriculture requiring training and information costs; furthermore, they have the lowest agreement on the fact that PF has to be supported by economic or training support measures. Discourse 5 is the only discourse that considers PFTs to be an easy-to understand technology that is suitable for large farms. They think that PF requires training and information costs and that it is a difficult activity to be carried out without financial support. Nevertheless, they have the strongest consideration of PF as a strategy that can be pursued even without the collaboration of institutions or other farms. The members of all groups consider PF to be the use of new technology to be more efficient by maximising the ratio between input and output to a slight extent. The extracted perspectives answer the research question we asked ourselves at the beginning of the work, that is, “precision farming for me is…”, delving into the cognitive sphere of entrepreneurs. Unlike other works in the literature, this study extends beyond the perception adoption link , but we try to outline those thoughts that can be useful to stakeholders and policy makers to better understand the PF phenomenon. The aim of this paper was “to colour the picture of farmers’ perception“, and the analysis provided five different “colours” to better outline the picture of the puzzle pieces.

Furthermore, it could be important to emphasise that the self-selected sample of respondents belonging to these 3 approaches is, on average, composed of young people , confirming studies reporting that the propensity for knowledge and adoption of new technologies in agriculture is a prerogative of young actors . This study highlights a possible lack of knowledge and information in the advanced age groups, who decided not to respond to our investigation and who, according to the literature, rely mainly on their experience rather than digital support in their farm management and rarely appear as experts in this kind of study. The QM could be a useful method for answering the question “What do farmers really think about PF?”, revealing in our results some relevant perspectives of Italian farmers and overcoming the limitations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in studying the self. Given our results and in the context of innovation processes in agriculture, we believe that a mixed method, such as the QM, allows us to colour the piece of the cognitive sphere, which we have set ourselves to investigate. This opens the door for future developments to research to understand the interactions between the cognitive sphere and the other pieces of the puzzle to arrive at a more systemic and holistic understanding of innovation processes in agriculture. This analysis provides new contributions to the study of PF adoption, focusing all the attention on the perspectives of entrepreneurs rather than making another classification of the business types more or less inclined to adopt PFTs.

Recurring topics were the need for shorter value chains, more fairness towards farmers, and less dependence on migrant workers. However, we observed limited adaptive and no transformative responses. This might betray a general orientation towards robustness and attempts to avoid larger changes to the modes of operation. Similar to the results of other studies , our case studies found limited impact on the production and delivery of food and other agricultural products. This was due to either little exposure or the agile activation of robustness capacities of the farming systems in combination with an enabling institutional environment. While this constitutes a significant achievement, considerations during the crisis were almost exclusively limited to the productive functions of the system.Moreover, actors in the farming systems and the enabling environment generally focused on the immediate issues and gave little consideration to long-term implications and challenges. Hence, adaptive or transformative capacities were much less on display than coping capacities. The comparison of pre-Covid findings and the Covid-19 crisis mostly showed similarities. For instance, if challenges already loomed before the crisis, they persisted during the crisis, sometimes even to a larger extent.

Also, the focus on coping capacities was already visible before the crisis. In addition, led grow lights the comparison confirmed the eminent role of resilience attributes. For instance, in cases with high connectedness and diversity we found that these system characteristics contributed significantly to the ability to deal with the crisis. However, the findings during the crisis did not entirely reproduce pre-Covid findings, i.e. some cases experienced other challenges, were able to mobilise more responsive capacities than expected, or showed that already existing connectedness did not lead to adequate actions during the crisis. This illustrates the latent, multi-faceted and dynamic nature of resilience. The data only capture short-term responses to the immediate shock of the first wave of the pandemic and the ensuing restrictions. For instance, we did not assess whether online platforms were sustained. Experiences from later lockdowns during the second and third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic indicate that ‘many had to invent the wheel again’. This resonates with the observation that despite a long list of discussed topics, farming system actors did not use the crisis as a window to trigger more structural change. The only exception in our sample – the prohibition of subcontracting in German slaughterhouses – was forced upon the industry by the Ministry of Labour Affairs, which enabled a change that most observers felt was long due. More than one year into the crisis it becomes clear that the short-term shock evolves into long-term stresses, in particular at the macro-economic level of unemployment, public and private debt and reduced purchasing power. Sectors that are particularly affected also lose valuable resources, from skilled labour to missing investments and interrupted social and economic network connections.

It is plausible that the experience of labour shortages and the importance of digital platforms in developing coping strategies will accelerate trends towards automation and digitalization in the food and agricultural sector as in the general economy. The findings have important implications for policy making. First, the analysis demonstrates a need to strengthen anticipatory capacities at all levels, in particular the ability to recognise signals of impending threats, whether they are short-term or long-term . Second, the actors’ reflections in our case studies mostly betrayed a questioning of transnational value chains. Policy makers need to discuss openly whether regional and short value chains are indeed generally more resilient and should therefore become a policy priority. Third, the importance of resilience attributes iterates that system design matters and, thus, that being impacted by a crisis is not ‘just a matter of bad luck’. It needs to be discussed how resilience attributes, such as connectedness in value chains and diversity, can become a more integral part of policy design. Fourth, the convergence of pre-Covid and crisis findings demonstrates that the systematic resilience assessment of farming systems points at system vulnerabilities. This knowledge can directly feed into stress tests of food systems. Fifth, the Covid-19 crisis is likely to reinforce concerns about future pandemics from zoonosis and to raise awareness of the interdependence of animal, plant, environmental and human health. From a resilience perspective, such public health issues create system vulnerabilities that might require a transformation, in particular of animal-based farming systems. At the same time, our analysis indicates that the transformative capacity of many farming systems needs to be actively enhanced and stimulated through an enabling environment. This includes the provision of specific resources for a desired transition and formal and informal institutional arrangements that provide a clear sense of direction and that enable rather than impede transformations that are necessary to maintain public goods and services.

An important question for future research is whether the focus on short-term robustness just reflects the higher visibility and urgency of shocks compared to slow processes that undermine or threaten important system functions, or whether they betray an imbalance in resilience capacities at the expense of adaptability and transformability. Another task for research is the development of a systematic understanding how short-term crisis interventions to secure the provision of private goods can synergetically support transformations that are needed to address the broad range of challenges to public goods . Intensive farming practices produce cheap food, but are also criticised for impairing animal welfare, and for contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss, poor air quality, soil degradation, stench and the risk of zoonoses . Policy makers and citizens call for alternative, demand-oriented, and less intensive farming strategies, which generate a higher income for farmers and decrease the negative externalities of production . Farmers’ strategic decisions are done with regards to market integration, e.g., enlarge to stay competitive in the international market, or produce for smaller demand-oriented markets like organic. Yet, there has often been a mismatch between, on the one hand, societal and political preferences towards alternative farming strategies1 like organic, and on the other hand, observed farmer behaviour. In the past, implemented policies had unintended consequences. In the Dutch pork sector, for example, a governmental subsidy for pig farmers to convert to the organic market introduced around the year 2000 resulted in a higher increase in organic supply than the anticipated increase in demand for organic pork meat.

Excess supply resulted in dropped farm gate prices, pressure on organic farmers’ income, and a damaged reputation of organic farming as a good alternative to conventional among conventional pig farmers . In addition, while organic farming is generally seen by citizens and policy-makers as a viable alternative to conventional farming, farmers feel peer pressure to remain conventional or to defend their choice for alternative farming strategies like organic towards their peers . This shows a friction between societal preferences and farmer dynamics. In order to design an effective support strategy for alternative farming strategies, better understanding of the diffusion of alternative farming strategies is needed, in particular effects of market price dynamics and social interaction among farmers. Pig farmer decision-making is related to many factors, which can roughly be grouped into personal, contextual, and social factors . Personal factors that are associated with a higher chance to invest in stables in general are younger age and having a successor.Personal factors that are associated with investments in higher animal welfare or more sustainable stables are a positive attitude towards the alternative , higher innovativeness , and an idealistic farming style . Some of these factors are relatively static, i.e. a pig farmer’s innovativeness and a farmer’s farming style , while other factors are dynamic, i.e. age and attitudes.Contextual factors that influence pig farmers’ decision-making are the farmers’ investment rhythm and farm size. Farmers’ investment rhythm is determined by the useful life of an asset, such as the time that it takes for a stable to be depreciated, and the farmer’s opportunity rhythm to make a long-term change on his farm determined partly by the availability of a successor.

Farmers take into account their farm size as follows: the larger the size the more additional supply from the farm would affect the elastic organic market price; and therefore farmers with a large farm do not see organic as a viable alternative . Finally, social factors that influence investment decisions are norms, i.e. the behaviour and opinions of peers that can influence behaviour, and the status of farmers within reference groups. In a game environment, social interactions have shown to influence farmers’ strategic investments through opinion leadership . Also, in a study on the adoption of an alternative housing systems for sows, i.e. group housing instead of individual crates, those farmers who did not yet convert felt less peer pressure . The Social Identity Approach relates social interaction to behaviour change, through the social dimension of a person’s self-concept. The main idea behind the Social Identity Approach is that humans have a universal drive to evaluate their opinions and attitudes to increase their self-esteem and/or confidence and status as a group member . Individuals within a group are motivated to act according to the norms associated with being a member of the group,vertical grow system and disagreement in opinion or attitude between in-group members can result in attempts to reduce the disagreement through social influence . The Social Identity Approach states that the level of influence is based on similarity between self and other, i.e. whether they are in-group or out-group members; the similarity of the situational context between self and other; the status of oneself and the other within the group, i.e. the direction of influence; and the level of identification with the in-group . To understand and model influence between farmers, it is, therefore, important to know about similarity in person, situational context, and what gives status within a certain reference group. To identify Dutch pig farmers’ reference groups in the context of organic market conversion, we looked at previous findings and distinguish four reference groups. As shown above, pig farmers take into account their farm size when considering conversion to an added-value market . Therefore, the first reference group consists of farmers who are similar in farm size. Second, organic and conventional farmers opposed each other’s’ practices in the past . Therefore, the second reference group consists of farmers producing for the same market. Third, previous research identified three farming styles that have been relatively stable over time in the Dutch pig farmer population: idealists, craftsmen and entrepreneurs.

They differ in their definition of ‘being a good farmer’ and in status symbols, those factors that give farmers a high status within their farming style reference group . Idealists see pig farming as a way to earn a living instead of a way to maximise profits, and they like to keep investments low . In addition, they value farming methods that incorporate the intrinsic needs of animals into farm design and management. They oppose conventional farming methods that are harmful to animal welfare and think that behaviour of conventional farmers contributes to current societal criticism regarding the Dutch pig sector . Both craftsmen and entrepreneurs opt for maximising profits instead of maintaining a livelihood . Craftsmen gain profits through high productivity, e.g. intensification through increasing litter size and/or daily growth, while entrepreneurs optimise farm management, farm scale and market integration . The latter two oppose the idealistic worldview. Therefore, the third reference group consists of farmers with a similar farming style. Finally, innovative farmers, as opposed to conservative farmers, are more open to new ideas and alternative investments as described above. We, therefore, assume in the remainder of this article that farmers who are more innovative have a different reference group than their conservative colleagues: conservative farmers’ reference groups are similar farmers , while innovative farmers’ reference group are farmers who are higher in status . Therefore, the fourth reference group consists of farmers who are higher in status according to one’s own farming style. For example, the reference group of innovative farmers with an entrepreneurial farming style are all farmers who earn a higher income than themselves regardless of farming style, farm size or market. This will be further outlined under ‘interaction mechanism’ below.

In 1994 permanent subsidies for organic farming were implemented . This was extended in 1996 where additional funding was provided for advice to farmers in the transition phase. At the same time subsidies for development initiatives were also given by the state for processing, marketing and distribution of organic products. Denmark also invested into schools, institutions and universities to educate farmers, increase knowledge and product development.Currently the Danish government provides farmers with subsidies for conversion and maintenance of organic farming . To encourage organic farming in Austria the government implemented several subsidies and incentives to help create the image of “Ecoland Austria”. “Without a doubt, the organic farming boom in Austria was caused by government subsidies distributed on a federal scale” . This is confirmed by Musshoff and Hirschauer , who stated that financial subsidies increased the willingness of farmers to convert. In 1989 three Austrian provinces started to provide subsidies to individual farmers for switching to organic farming. In 1991 the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry stimulated the growth by introducing subsidies and an incentive program. Grants for organic farming associations and national conversion subsidies were implemented. Also, during and after conversion,hydroponic dutch buckets assistance was given to the farmer . In 1992 these subsidies where supplemented by a program which supports organic production for existing producers .

After entering the EU in 1995 Austria implemented a new agri-environmental program: ¨ OPUL. This five-year national aid program encouraged conversion and maintenance of organic farmers.Respondents in Denmark indicated both farming conditions and stakeholder cooperation as highly relevant. For policy development of the sector it was very important that there was little competition between farm organizations. Consensus between parties on organic support and resource availability for the organic sector eases the establishment of new policies . Besides this, the development of the Danish Agriculture and Food Council has linked the interest of the organic sector with the agricultural sector. The association considered the interests of all parties as consumers, ministries and industrial organizations . The close cooperation between the organic agricultural sector and the Danish Agriculture and Food Council led to positive features. It increased the dissemination of new knowledge, establishment of advisory services and development of organic policies . In this paper, we analyzed potential barriers for upscaling organic dairy farming in the Netherlands and making a comparison with organic dairy in Austria and Denmark, two EU countries that have shown a strong growth in organic dairy farming. Here we first discuss the findings from the TIS analysis and the diffusion of organic dairy, while in the second part we discuss the larger ramifications with respect to a sustainability transition in agriculture.

In TIS, the functioning of an innovation system is analyzed in relation to the transition phases of the innovation process . Typically, in the early phases of development, the functions guidance of the search, market formation, resource mobilization, and counteract resistance to change may hamper the further upscaling if they are not positively fulfilled. In the final acceleration phase, where the innovation diffuses into the socio-technical regime, barriers in market formation may hamper diffusion . Additionally, Schiller et al. identified various interdependencies amongst the TIS functions in agroecological food systems, and as such weaknesses of functions could cascade throughout the whole innovation system. Based on the barrier analysis, our results of Dutch organic dairy farming indicate that the functioning of guidance of the search, entrepreneurial activities, resource mobilization and market formation are hampered by various barriers that lead to an arrested diffusion of organic dairy farming. The lack of diffusion in the Netherlands can be explained first by a weak governmental support. The introduction of organic farming in the Netherlands in the 1990s occurred during a time of large policy reforms at the Ministry of Agriculture, triggered by a neoliberal political discourse that is still visible today . One example of this was a separation between policy making at the Ministry on one hand and implementation through privatized organizations on the other hand. This had impacts on agricultural research and education and led to a larger emphasis on technical solutions, export orientation and competitiveness of the agricultural sector . During the early 1990s organic farmers were strongly limited in their abilities due to the privatized networks of institutes and agribusiness and these hurdles were not solved by the Ministry .

As can be found in many newspaper articles published in the early 2000s, critics of organic farming saw the possible diffusion of organic agriculture as a step back. As such, the organic niche had to prove itself on a competitive market without much public support. The lack of explicit policy support in the Netherlands can also be illustrated by the many newspaper articles that dealt with environmental issues such as the long history of persistent manure problems in livestock farming, and this problem was reinforced after the abolishment of the milk quota in 2015. As a result the long-term negotiated derogation on manure application at the EU-level by the Dutch government came under political pressure. Because livestock density is lower on organic farms it adds less to the problem. Yet, governmental decisions to cut emissions were not alleviated for organic farmers. The governmental laissez-faire demand-side support towards organic farming and the strong belief that organic farming should grow by mainstream market mechanisms without niche protection was also reinforced by the incumbent regime. Repeatedly newspaper articles mentioned the resistance from the Dutch farmers association LTO to provide concrete measures to support organic farming. In contrast, Austria and Denmark applied supply-side support to organic dairy farming. In for example Denmark, explicit government support towards organic dairy can also be illustrated in relation to the use of pesticides by conventional farmers. Here, the Danish government found that this use was threatening the groundwater wells, and decided to tax pesticide use while tax revenues were used to further support organic farming . As such, the Danish government created a new level playing field between conventional and organic dairy farmers, making it more attractive for farmers to produce organic. Second, regarding resource mobilization the Dutch government only developed demand side policy instruments that mainly addressed knowledge development on market formation.

The Dutch government did not use CAP payments to support organic farming during transition and national transition subsidies were already phased out by 2002. Respondents indicated the high agricultural land prices in the Netherlands to be a barrier for transition. Indeed, agricultural land prices1 are about 6 times higher in the Netherlands compared to Denmark and Austria2 , and are the highest in Europe. Moreover, in the past organic farmers also indicated problems with additional labor force since organic farming is more labor intensive. Although from its onset the organic policy in Denmark was also demand side driven, it gradually shifted by 1995 towards a supply side approach to support farmers during and after the transition . Currently both in Denmark and Austria farmers are supported by transition subsidies and maintenance payments, using measure 11 of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development . Both respondents and literature suggest resource mobilization remains a critical issue to retain organic farmers, as many would shift back to conventional farming due to higher costs . Indeed, according to the annual report of Skal in 2019, 24% of the Dutch farmers that ceased organic farming indicated this for financial reasons . Third, the weak organic market formation in the Netherlands is probably related to the higher consumer prices. In a study on the repeated purchase of organic products, Marian et al. indeed found high prices to be an obstacle to consumers. However, high prices alone did not explain the low repeated purchase in their study. In conventional products, high prices are usually perceived as a quality cue . This is not always the case for organic products and consumers may perceive high prices as additional costs rather than quality improvement . To gain more repeated consumer purchase, Marian et al. suggested to further differentiate organic products through branding. To illustrate the effects of such a brand differentiation, the sustainable coffee market in the Netherlands can serve as an example. Here, certified coffee together reached a market share of 45% in 2010 .

The rapid market creation was the result of a competition between different brands on the market and the rivalry of multiple certification systems . Importantly here, retailers started to push the ‘less sustainable certification label’ as a standard brand in their collection. This also had positive effects on the purchase of more stringent coffee labels as discussions amongst coffee market leaders and retailers arose on the sustainability aspects, which led to an increased market share of all labels . This diversification approach is recently also applied to fresh domestic produce in the Netherlands. For example the market share of the new label “On the way to Planet proof” has grown 492% between 2018 and 2019 . The approach shows a strong growth of total market share of sustainable produced dairy to more than 15% in 2018, although the specific sustainability criteria of the various types of certification differ from organic.To conclude, our barrier analysis on the functioning of Dutch organic dairy farming innovation system thus indicates that the current development is more associated with the early phases of the transition than with a late transition stage . In contrast, in Denmark and Austria the diffusion of the organic market is in an acceleration phase, illustrated by exponential growth of organic purchase per capita since 2000 . It is suggested that in both Denmark and Austria mass distribution of organic dairy by large retail is the main driver of the diffusion and have led to smaller consumer price differences, bato bucket but to a much lesser extent in the Netherlands where large retail contributes to around 50% of total organic sales . In Austria and Denmark also strategic marketing campaigns were developed targeting regional origin , or health issues . Recently, agricultural transitions have been studied using the MultiLevel Perspective , drawing on earlier research conducted on the energy transition . However, agricultural sustainability transitions might be fundamentally different in comparison to the more ‘technology driven’ energy transition. First, farming is a land based activity where innovations such as organic practices are very often developed by regime actors who switch to alternative practices to challenge the incumbent sociotechnical regime, and not by the challenges of newcomers . This is referred in the transition literature as a ‘regime transformation’.

A regime transformation can occur through an accumulation of novelties in niche spaces that allow for radical practices to emerge , in which novelties are strongly related to so-called second order innovation changes in which pressure is put on the incumbent regime . Niches are the outcome of various processes, including knowledge development and sharing and social embedding that may lead to the certification of practices through standards, also to protect niches . To develop niches further, appropriate incentives to actors need to be in place, such as taxation systems or regulatory support . In addition, governments can facilitate niche development through financial support, a purchasing policy of certified products to increase market share, and active interventions at international declarations of intent with various market actors in the case of international commodities . Second, farming takes place in spatially diverse settings with very different farm structures resulting in different ‘transformation pathways’ . Various certification labels may be able to tackle these different settings through specialization and diversification of sustainability criteria . Indeed, motives and pathways towards sustainable farming may differ considerably between regions and farm types . In some areas organic farming might be a solution to the low competitiveness of family farms that produce under sub optimal conditions , in other regions, like in the Netherlands or Denmark, it may motivate farmers to escape the ‘productivist’ paradigm of conventional farming competing on world markets . Third, a sustainability transition in agriculture based on for example organic principles, is much less driven by technological improvements as they include mostly extensification of practices, leading to agricultural products that are always more expensive to produce than their conventional counterparts.

For example, in 2018 the share of total organic agricultural land, including arable farming and horticulture, was relatively low in the Netherlands, but much larger in Denmark and Austria, respectively 9.8% and 24.7% . For dairy farming, the share of organic dairy cows in the Netherlands was 2.3% in 2017, and in respectively Denmark and Austria 12.3% and 21.2% . Although consistent and reliable statistics on organic markets and commodity breakdown is still non-existent,some organic consumption patterns show marked differences. In 2019 Danish and Austrian consumers purchased respectively € 344 and € 215 per capita on organic food, while Dutch consumers spend €71 per capita.Finally, the market share of organic dairy in 2019 was ca. 21% in Denmark, 16% in Austria and only 4.1% in the Netherlands .Within the full range of organic farming , each can be identified as single niches. Organic dairy farming therefore is a niche, and in transition studies niches are often defined as “protected spaces where new socio-technical practices can develop” .A transition is a long term, complex and multidimensional process, where a societal subsystem radically or incrementally changes . The sociotechnical regime is a central concept within transition research and defined as “a relatively stable configuration of institutions, techniques and artefacts, as well as rules, practices and networks that determine the development and use of technologies” . Sustainable transitions can be seen as a long-term goal, and therefore what is considered ‘sustainable’ can change over time. Changes within a regime occur at different dimensions such as technological, material, organizational, institutional, political, economic, and socio-cultural.

This is due to the fact that established technologies and practices are highly intertwined within these systems . As a result, numerous difficulties in the upscaling of organic dairy farming could be identified, related to organizational, ebb flow tray technological and knowledge exchange issues , power relations and a variety of other institutional problems . Innovation system frameworks have shown to be useful to study the transition of agricultural systems towards more sustainability . More specifically the Technological Innovation System is used to assess the barriers and drivers of a niche as it grows and institutionalizes to further challenge the existing regime . A TIS is defined as a set of networks of actors, infrastructure and institutions that jointly interact in a specific technological field that contribute to the generation, diffusion and utilization of variants of a new technology and/or a new product . Central to a TIS is that innovation and diffusion is steered both by individual and collective actions and as such includes an analysis of system functions. Next to mapping the structure of the innovation system , it is therefore important to identify the most important key processes that are needed to build up the respective innovation system . These key processes are coined in Hekkert et al. as the seven system functions and can be mapped throughout time in order to identify system dynamics . In this paper we apply the TIS framework to the Dutch case of organic dairy farming in order to understand what may hamper upscaling.

To identify potential leverage points, the development of the organic dairy sector in Denmark and Austria will be studied alongside as examples of countries in which the organic niche is much more advanced. For this study we use a mixture of information sources, i.e., a literature review, a newspaper review, and semi-structured interviews of key stakeholders within the organic dairy value chains from the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. In the study of agricultural transitions, slight adaptations to TIS have been made in the past, such as the Agriculture Innovation System , where innovation is seen as an outcome of the different interactions between the actors, institutions, and the economic, environmental and societal systems and as such less focused on the development of new technologies but rather on organizational and institutional change . Indeed, the emphasis within the organic farming transition is not only about the technological aspects of the innovation, but also about the understanding of the system dynamics and performance of a system within the wider ‘conventional agricultural practices’ . As such, in the current study AIS was applied, while using the functional aspects of TIS. The TIS uses five steps to analyze the functioning of an innovation system based on Wieczorek and Hekkert , i.e., the analysis of the structural components of the system such as actors, institutions, networks and interactions, infrastructures , the functional analysis and the identification of system problems, and formulation of systemic instruments.

The analytical framework of TIS contributes to the understanding of the complex nature of the diffusion of a niche, such as organic farming, by analysing the obstacles that may block this process . As such, problems that are identified from the coupled structural functional analysis may hinder the diffusion of an innovation and are referred to as systemic problems . In this respect, Weber and Rohracher identified three types of failures of transformative change. i) Market failures that are linked to the niche level and may include leakage effects and the higher costs associated with sustainable production. ii) System failures that could affect infrastructures such as a lack of knowledge, capability problems such as competences, and institutional failures such as a regime that strongly hinders the uptake. This can be further divided into soft institutional failures that relate to habits and culture, and hard institutional failures that refer to laws and regulations that block the diffusion of an innovation. Finally, iii) transformation failures referring to directional failure by a lack of a shared vision, weak consumer support , policy coordination failure and reflexivity failure that signifies a lack of long term commitment and learning ability. To gain a better understanding and to identify the current state of development of the organic dairy sector, including value chain actors, first literature reviews were conducted on organic dairy farming in the Netherlands, Denmark and Austria. Literature searches were performed in Google Scholar, Science Direct and Scopus.This search string includes more than organic dairy since the research is focused on transitions rather than practices alone.

Related governmental documents and websites were also examined. Once theoretical saturation of the literature was achieved the results were used to formulate questions for interviews. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with interviewees in all three countries. Most interviews lasted between 30 and 60 min and were carried out face to face or over the telephone. In total 23 interviews were performed with experts of the organic dairy sector in the Netherlands, Austria and Denmark . The sample included representatives from governmental bodies, NGOs, universities, farmers, processors and retailers. The 13 Dutch interviewees were asked questions which were formulated around the seven functions of the TIS framework . To strengthen the solutions found in the literature review for Denmark and Austria, 10 interviews were held with experts within the Danish and Austrian agricultural regime. Questions were related to the seven functions, and the observed barriers. Also country specific solutions to barriers were identified and are further referred to as enabling factors. Most experts were found after a review of relevant policy documents from government and industry. Using snowball sampling subsequent interviewees were found. Finally other relevant stakeholders were found by visiting a trade fair . In total 63 experts were contacted . Third, the Lexis Nexis search engine was used to retrieve relevant Dutch newspaper articles, published between 1991 and 2018 on organic farming to get a better understanding of the public debates and discourses on organic farming in the Netherlands. The primary search using‘biologische landbouw’ resulted in 8157 newspaper items, though many of those are published multiple times in different imprints of national newspaper agencies, or published papers that did not have a link to Dutch organic farming . Based on relevant article headings and removing duplicates a corpus of 260 papers was retrieved as pdf documents. Within the corpus search strings such as ‘government’, ‘cabinet’, ‘Minister’, ‘organic policy’, ‘retail’, ‘supermarket’, and ‘consumer’ were used to retrieve relevant information.

The information flow of the different steps are depicted in Fig. 1. The grounded theory method was used to analyze the interviews. Grounded theory is “a systematic method for constructing a theoretical analysis from data”,flood and drain tray and as such an iterative process between data collection analysis and theory building . An initial coding framework for the barriers in the Netherlands was created through an iterative process in which the seven functions were used as categories. After the first interviews were transcribed the coding framework was created. An iterative comparison between the data and concepts was made to convert the verbal data into barriers. Adoptions to the framework were made until theoretical saturation was achieved. The coding framework for Austria and Denmark was created based on the enabling factors found in literature. After an interview was performed, the transcribed data was coded. The coding framework was adjusted when more interviews where established. By using this iterative process possible missing enabling factors were added into the coding framework. The barriers found through the coding process were further analyzed to provide the most common and important barriers. To decide which barriers were key in the development, a scoring system for the functions and barriers was developed. Every mentioned barrier was scored within the coding framework with value 1, if a respondent did not mention a barrier, the barrier got the value of 0. To calculate how often one barrier was mentioned, we divided the number of times a barrier was mentioned by the sample size and multiplied by 100%. The Dutch sample size was 13, the sample size in Denmark and Austria was 5. To calculate how often a function was mentioned we divided all mentioned barriers within a function to the total mentioned barriers and multiplied by 100%. Using a three-point Likert scale the priority of the various barriers was assessed. This scale divides the barriers in three levels of priority according to the number of times a barrier was mentioned by the respondents. If less than 33% of the respondents mentioned a barrier it was of low priority , between 34 and 66% the barrier was of medium priority and 67–100% was of high priority . Following this, each barrier was linked to one of the seven functions. To get a clear understanding which barrier resisted the development the most, the barriers starting from medium priority or higher within the most important functions were evaluated in the results.

After linking each specific barrier to the structure of the system, the systemic problem can be identified. This systemic problem will point at which function mostly hindering the development and upscaling of the organic dairy innovation system. Based on the interviews, 19 barriers could be identified, while these barriers were mentioned in total 92 times by the Dutch respondents. These barriers are linked to the seven TIS functions in such way that 7% of the barriers was associated with the function entrepreneurial activities, 5% with the function knowledge development, 0% with the function knowledge exchange, 34% with the function guidance of the search, 37% with the function market formation, 15% with the function resource mobilization and 2% with the function counteract resistance to change . Since 1991, in Europe, including the Netherlands, organic farming has been institutionalized by the EC Regulation 2092/91 . This regulation includes, amongst others, strict rules regarding use of fertilizers, pesticides etc., while the organic certification guarantees farmers a higher milk price. The share of organic dairy farmers in the Netherlands slowly increased from 1.1% in 2001 to ca. 2.9% in 2019. Milk production per cow is lower, but due to higher organic milk prices farmers receive a higher income per labor hour . Since 2013 organic milk prices are decoupled from conventional milk prices, which also resulted in a larger difference because conventional milk prices strongly dropped after the milk quota abolishment in 2015 and subsequently a larger supply.In 2020 organic farmers received 49.5 Euro per 100 kg milk, which is 12.5 eurocent higher per kg milk than conventional farmers.Because organic milk prices are less volatile, income of organic farmers is more stable.