Environmental and social impacts of a rising demand for pesticide-free food

与传统农业相比，无农药农业有许多优点；例如，它支持更高的生物多样性和土壤有机碳和氮含量。然而，在这种系统中，产量通常较低，因此需要更多的土地来生产相同数量的粮食，或者必须在传统农业地区加强生产。由于全球有机食品市场预计将在目前500亿欧元的基础上进一步增长，因此出现了这种发展如何影响全球土地使用，食品价格和环境质量的问题。目前还不清楚欧盟和美国主要消费地区对无农药产品日益增长的需求将如何影响其他地区，特别是发展中国家，以及泄漏效应的性质和程度可能是什么。为了回答这些问题，在这个项目中，我将：I)进一步完善最近开发的能够模拟农业系统中大规模有害生物和农药动态的新型作物模型；Ii)应用该模型模拟世界各地不同种植制度下的作物产量和农药使用强度；Iii)执行全球农业部门模型，以确定世界不同区域对无农药商品的不同需求假设下的土地利用、商品价格和福利变化。有了这一设置，将有可能首次准确地比较世界不同地区对无农药食品日益增长的需求所产生的影响，发现从一个地区到另一个地区可能出现的泄漏效应，并确定需要改进政策的领域。

Pesticide-free agriculture has many advantages over conventional agriculture; it for example supports a higher biodiversity and soil organic carbon and nitrogen content on fields. Yields, however, are usually lower in such systems, and as a consequence more land is needed to produce the same amount of food, or production has to be intensified on conventional agricultural areas. Since the global market for organic food is expected to grow further in future from its currently 50 billion Euros, the question arises how this development may impact global land use, food prices and environmental quality. It is also unclear how the increasing demand for pesticide-free products in the main consumer regions EU and US will impact other regions, especially developing countries, and what the nature and magnitude of the leakage effects are likely to be. To answer these questions, in this project I will: i) further refine a recently developed novel crop model capable of simulating large-scale pest and pesticide dynamics in agricultural systems; ii) apply the model to simulate crop yields and pesticide use intensities in different cropping systems around the world; iii) execute a global agricultural sector model to determine land use, commodity prices and changes in welfare under different demand assumptions for pesticide-free commodities in different regions of the world. With this set-up, it will become possible for the first time to accurately compare the impact of the increasing demand for pesticide-free food across different regions of the world, detect possible leakage effects from one region to another, and identify areas in need of policy improvements.