Assessment of the ecological impact of novel strategies and technologies in organic food systems and outreach of the QLIF project (subproject 7)
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Organic farming reduces many of the environmental and ecological problems caused by intensive conventional farming such as pollution, loss of biodiversity, soil erosion etc. However, there are also critical points in the way that organic farming is practised.
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As a result it is important that new strategies and novel technologies that allow environmental impacts to be reduced further are introduced into organic and low input farming systems, through projects such as QLIF or other national and international research activities.
Nitrate leaching
In a first approach, subproject 7 addresses nitrate leaching depending on changes and optimization of crop rotations. Additional simulations will also be done with other factors (e.g. energy use) to provide an overall ecological and environment impact assessment of innovations developed under QLIF. The goal of these investigations is to improve the overall sustainability of organic production strategies on both crop and livestock level (see Thorup-Kristensen, 2007).
Dissemination and Organic Eprints
Dissemination of results gained through basic and applied research activities is a crucial effort of the QLIF project. In addition to many well known tools for outreach such as peer reviewed papers, publication in farmers’ journals and magazines, all QLIF project outputs are made available at the Organic Eprints online archive at http://www.orgprints.org, the most frequently visited Internet site for organic stakeholders.
QLIF results have also recently been published in a ‘Handbook of organic food quality and safety’ for producers, processors and scientists (Cooper et al. 2007).
International training and exchange courses
Outreach activities include farmer workshops and visits to field trials, and QLIF training programmes for Master and PhD students as well as for junior scientists in cutting-edge organic food and farming research. These international training and exchange courses offer ‘state of the art’ knowledge on interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research approaches used in agricultural, landscape and environmental science and build a bridge for young scientists to poly-factorial and multi-level problems in practical science (see van der Burgt and Wagenaar, 2007).
References
Cooper, J., Niggli, U.& C Leifert, C. (2007). Handbook of organic food quality and safety. Woodhead Publishing Ltd. London.
Thorup-Kristensen, K. (2007) Effect of crop management practices on the sustainability and environmental impact of organic and low input food production systems. In: Niggli, U. et al. (Eds) (2007): Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress of the European Integrated Project Quality Low Input Food (QLIF). FiBL, Frick, Switzerland
van der Burgt, G.J.H.M. and Wagenaar, J.P. (2007) International training and exchange – a useful instrument in knowledge and attitude dissemination. In: Niggli, U. et al. (Eds) (2007): Proceedings of the 3rd International Congress of the European Integrated Project Quality Low Input Food (QLIF). FiBL, Frick, Switzerland |
