CAN ORGANIC FARMING HELP TO REDUCE NATIONAL ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND EMISSIONS OF GREENHOUSE GASSES IN DENMARK? - Economics of Sustainable Energy in Agriculture - page 190

1996-situation were similar to the values of a more detailed study of
emissions from Danish agriculture in 1995 (Andersen 1999).
Consequently, it seems that our scenario resolution is sufficient to get
reliable results for greenhouse gas emissions.
The total greenhouse gas emissions are not surprisingly lowest in
the scenario with the highest fodder self-sufficiency and the lowest animal
production (A), while the highest emissions found are where the animal
production and the fodder import is high (C). In the scenarios A and B, the
greenhouse gas emissions are increased when the crop yields are improved,
while the opposite is the case in scenario C. The cause for this is, that the
animal production in scenario A and B are limited by the total crop yield.
Therefore, higher yields lead to a higher animal production and higher
greenhouse gas emission. On the contrary, in scenario C, the animal
production is not limited by the crop yield, because import of fodder
sustains an animal production equal to the one in 1996. Therefore, higher
yields here leads to a lower fodder import, which lower the total
greenhouse gas emissions. To validate whether this reverse relationship
may be caused by a too high energy cost for imported fodder assumed in
Dalgaard et al. 's (2001) model, a sensitivity analysis is carried out. If for
instance the energy cost for imported fodder is reduced by 25%, the
difference between the greenhouse gas emissions for present and improved
crop yields in scenario C is reduced by 0.1 Tg carbon dioxide equivalents.
However, this reduction is less than the difference described above, and the
reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the yields do not
seem to be caused only by an overestimated energy cost of imported
fodder. Similarly, the present scenarios could be used as a basis for
economic sensitivity analysis, and the role of prices in input and output
choice both on the farm level and with the society as a whole could be
analysed.
5. CONCLUSIONS
The presented method is useful to calculate national energy consumption
and emissions of greenhouse gasses from both conventional and organic
farming. However, the method to scale up energy consumption from an
existing farm level model to the national level was only possible to validate
for conventional farming. Future work on procedures to estimate
consequences of conversion to organic farming on larger scales than the
farm is therefore needed.
Results showed that from agricultural energy consumption is
responsible for about 1/4 of the greenhouse gas emissions from both