Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Environmental Aspects Of Organic Farming
http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/58298
integration of landscape features as well as the crop diversity and their optimal distributing.
Marginal strips along water courses and reservoirs and protective grass strips on slopes make
buffering areas, limit overland flow and prevent erosion and expand biodiversity. Organic
farming is supposed to be the preferred farming system especially in the areas of water
resources conservation.
Organic farmers fertilize the soil in such way so not to pollute groundwater. Within organic
farming in addition to manure and liquid manure, there is green manure also used as fertilizer
and legumes are properly incorporated into the crop rotation. This reduces the leaching of
nitrogen into groundwater. As a result of leaching through the soil profile and due to erosion
and surface runoff, nitrates in water causes contamination of the hydrosphere and along with
phosphorus cause eutrophication [30]. Concurrently, there is a leaching of base cations (K+,
Ca2+) and thus the upper soil layer are depleted of these nutrients. Indirectly, this leads to
acidification. Due to leaching, several tens of kg N. ha-1. year-1 is normally lost [51]. Organi‐
cally cultivated areas provide better flood protection than conventional surfaces. The high
infiltration capacity of the soil with virgin structure may reduce the intensity of floods [49].
1.4. Air quality
Agricultural activities have not a negligible impact also on air quality. Organic farming as a
whole contributes to the creation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases with about 14% while
the ratio differentiates with particular countries according to the agricultural production
intensity. Due to its large area impact, agriculture belongs to the largest producers after
industry and mining. [14] state that agriculture contributes to annual increase of GHG
emissions with approximately one fifth. Even higher value is stated by [10], whose findings
report the proportion of 27%.However, with the increasing consumption of food and agricul‐
tural intensification, this percentage is rising. When adding pre-farming and post-farming
phases to the agricultural frame itself or quantifying food life cycle, the emission load is even
higher. This is mainly due to production of agrochemicals and processing of primary agricul‐
tural production. Moreover due to the increasing human population, agriculture will even
increase its pressure on the environment. There is constantly running the conversion of natural
habitats into agroecosystems and in parallel the intensification of farming on existing agricul‐
tural land. This is largely accompanied by other chemicalization of agriculture. The pressure
on increasing yields and the food consumption grow aggravate the share of agriculture of
emission load production. However in most cases, organic farming produces lower emission
load, not only in the field phase but also in the consequential phases.
Agriculture produces emissions in many ways. For example, CO 2 is released during the
consumption of fossil fuels or within reduction of organic matter content in the soil. N 2 0 is
released as a result of fertilizer application and within soil processes, CH 4 from the digestive
tract of some livestock species. Especially in the crop production, the emission production is
influenced by the intensity and thus by the system of farming.
Organic farming has a number of tools which help to reduce emission loads (see tab. 2). [42]
in accordance with the IPCC fourth assessment report states as the optimal measures for
mitigation (reducing stress) in organic agriculture the following points:
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