The impact of organic agriculture on socio-economic structures

Organic agriculture has rapidly developed world-wide the last few years and its shares of agricultural land and farms is growing everywhere. it can be defined as an approach to agriculture where the aim is to create integrated, humane, environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural production systems. A variety of impacts can be expected from organic production concerning environmental, agronomic, economic, and social impacts. The main environmental benefits accrued range from erosion and runoff control, to soil forming and conditioning, to pest, weed and disease control in plants and to conservation of biodiversity. The agronomic impacts concern changes in measures taken in operating organic farms, that include non-chemicals use, crop rotation, farm productivity improvement, energy saving, and securing system stability and resilience. The economic impacts concern high prices of organic products, low variable inputs costs, higher or at least equal gross margins and farm incomes with those in conventional farms. To consider social impacts of the farming system, organic farming tends to secure land tenure, to contribute to rural employment and help keeping in business small farms, to support community's self reliance, to encourage social participation and to improve housing situations. There are, however, uncertainties with organic farmers such as lack of information and institutional support, especially where inspection organizations are unavailable, the weakness of interested communities to mobilize and organize themselves to procure necessary inputs and to access markets, and neglect of farmers' knowledge of local conditions and of traditional practices.