Is a shortage of manure a constraint to organic farming?

Martin Nordin

No 2021:1, AgriFood-WP from Lund University, AgriFood Economics Centre

Abstract: This study uses Swedish data to examine if the availability of nearby manure is an important determinant of organic uptake. We calculate farms’ N balance of manure (animals production of N relative to N use in crop and forage production) and use coordinates to aggregate neighbors’ N balances. In plain districts, we find that a standard deviation change in the within-1km N balance of manure increases the probability of being organic with 11%. A smaller impact is found for other districts and for the within-2-3km N balance of manure. Thus, our findings suggest that a further expansion of organic farming relies, partly, on an expansion of livestock production. Paradoxically, however, to alleviate the environmental impact of agriculture − the goal of organic production − livestock production is, preferably, reduced.

Keywords: organic farming; manure; N availability; regional analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2021-02-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-isf
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://agrifood.se/Files/AgriFood_WP20211.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:luagri:2021_001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in AgriFood-WP from Lund University, AgriFood Economics Centre AgriFood Economics Centre, Box 730, Scheelevägen 15 D, 220 07 LUND, Sweden.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kristian Sundström ().