Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

L. Kirner and W. Schneeberger:

The structure of organic farms and those committed to "renunciation of means of production which increase yield"; a comparison in the context of the Austrian Environmental Programme

Summary

BV-farms are farm enterprises which have committed themselves to the "renunciation of means of production which increase yield" within the Austrian Environmental Programme. The conditions imposed on these farms in terms of soil and crop management are similar to those imposed on farms committed to "organic management" within the programme. The paper presented here compares the structures of BV- and organic farms and draws out the differences between the two farming systems. The methods used vary from simple description through to multivariate analyses. There are significant differences within the structural data and variance is large (as indicated by various statistical measures of variation). A consequence of this variance is that only 68 % of the BV- and organic farms could be correctly classified using a discriminant function. This implies that many BV-farms posses the necessary agricultural structure for converting to organic production. Key words:  Austrian Environmental Programme, organic farming, renunciation of means of production which increase yield, analysis of farm structure.