The spatial aggregation of organic farming in England and its underlying environmental correlates
The spatial aggregation of organic farming in England and its underlying environmental correlates
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英国有机农业的空间聚集及其潜在的环境相关性
DOI：
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发表时间：
2009
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
T. Benton
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
D. Gabriel;Stephen Carver;H. Durham;W. Kunin;R. Palmer;S. Sait;S. Stagl;T. Benton
总结
1
鉴于目前关于全球粮食危机的辩论，预计欧洲的保护将从以牺牲产量为代价最大限度地提高生物多样性转向在粮食生产限制下保护生物多样性。有机农业对环境可持续农业具有潜在的重要意义。了解有机农场的分布以及环境、社会和文化的相关性，对于预测这种情况可能随着时间的推移而发生的变化是必要的。
2
我们整理了30个变量的数据，这些变量描述了英国农业景观中的地形、气候、土壤、农场规模/类型、人口特征和农场业务。因素分析将这些变量简化为六个正交轴，分别描述土地是否适合耕种、农村化程度（到城市中心的距离和人口密度）、农场规模和类型、土壤水文和质地以及林地（林业）数量。
3
对有机农场分布的分析表明，它们在区域和邻里尺度上是空间聚集的，可以从农场规模/类型预测它们在10 × 10公里网格中的存在。
4
对有机农场集中度的分析表明，全国范围内有机农场发生的变化中约有三分之一可以通过一个统计模型来预测，该模型包括六个景观轴和一个用于解释空间聚集的术语。
5
合成与应用。我们的研究结果表明，与较低的农业潜力相关的环境变量的组合使农民更容易转向有机农业，这进一步促进了附近农民的转变。有机农业作为一种“野生动物友好”的方法，更有可能出现在农业不太有利的地区，在这些地区，向有机农业转变的经济激励不需要很高，而且由于转变而造成的生产损失相对较小。这表明，一个有效的保护战略，考虑到全球对粮食的需求，将是促进有机农业作为一个农业环境计划的景观已经丰富的有机农场在牺牲那些现有的高产景观，而不是。
Summary
1
Given the current debate on the global food crisis, conservation in Europe is expected to shift from maximizing biodiversity at the expense of yield to conserving biodiversity under food production constraints. Organic farming is potentially of great importance for environmentally sustainable farming. Understanding the distribution of organic farms and the environmental, social and cultural correlates is necessary to predict the way in which this may change over time.
2
We collated data from 30 variables describing the topography, climate, soils, farm size/type, human population characteristics and farm business in the English agricultural landscape. Factor analysis reduced these variables to six orthogonal axes, which describe the suitability of land for arable farming, the degree of ruralization (distance to urban centres and population density), the farm size and type, the soil hydrology and texture, and the amount of woodland (forestry).
3
An analysis of the distribution of organic farms showed that they are spatially aggregated at the regional and neighbourhood scales and that their presence in a 10 × 10-km grid square can be predicted from the farm size/type.
4
Analysis of the concentration of organic farms showed that about a third of the variance in their occurrence across the country can be predicted by a statistical model including the six landscape axes and a term to account for spatial aggregation.
5
Synthesis and applications. Our results show that a combination of environmental variables associated with a lower agricultural potential predisposes farmers to convert to organic farming, which further promotes conversion of farmers in the neighbourhood. Organic farming as a ‘wildlife friendly’ method is more likely to occur in agriculturally less-favoured areas where economic incentives for conversion to organic farming do not need to be high and the loss of production due to conversion will be comparatively small. This suggests that an efficient conservation strategy, which takes the global demand for food into account, would be to promote organic farming as an agri-environment scheme in landscapes that are already rich in organic farms at the expense of those existing high-production landscapes that are not.