Evaluating energetic, materials and biodiversity indicators of different agricultural approaches has recently become of large interest because of human need of accounting for sustainability. Organic cropping systems, considered by several governments in terms of benefits to environment and human health, is also looking for effective ways to communicate added value of organic produce to consumers through certification process. So, quality certification techniques, which try to grant the consumer for a quality which is not appreciable from common senses, required measurement tools as indicators, especially those able to compare conventional to organic farms. Even in the past years a lot of indicators have been proposed, they mostly lack of transparency especially those related to the farm scale. This problem is mainly due to the complexity of the system used to collect, query and assemble information. This analysis uses an object-oriented approach to develop a tool to represent farm structure and to make easier and transparent farm-scale indicator evaluation. The data structure developed in this analysis revealed to be able to reflect the farm information structure both to develop an efficient questionnaire and to host records from farm books and calendars. It also made effective in hosting indicator algorithms, making the computational pathway transparent and easily to be checked, fitting with other object-oriented approaches finalised to simulation (Carlson et al., 2009), and easy to host a gap-filling procedure, required because of a lack of information on questionnaires. Such a problem in particular could be due to the quality of farmer response, occurring when a large amount of questionnaires are submitted on a territory, as much as when character of local products are missing: think of manure used as soil amendment or specific varieties for which production or composition should require specific analysis. Production of those precise information would not influence nor policy making nor communication whereas indicators estimates need to be produced in few time and containing costs.
Comparing Organic and Conventional Agriculture: an Object-Oriented approach
VITALI, GIULIANO;ALBERTAZZI, SERGIO;VICARI, ALBERTO
2010
Abstract
Evaluating energetic, materials and biodiversity indicators of different agricultural approaches has recently become of large interest because of human need of accounting for sustainability. Organic cropping systems, considered by several governments in terms of benefits to environment and human health, is also looking for effective ways to communicate added value of organic produce to consumers through certification process. So, quality certification techniques, which try to grant the consumer for a quality which is not appreciable from common senses, required measurement tools as indicators, especially those able to compare conventional to organic farms. Even in the past years a lot of indicators have been proposed, they mostly lack of transparency especially those related to the farm scale. This problem is mainly due to the complexity of the system used to collect, query and assemble information. This analysis uses an object-oriented approach to develop a tool to represent farm structure and to make easier and transparent farm-scale indicator evaluation. The data structure developed in this analysis revealed to be able to reflect the farm information structure both to develop an efficient questionnaire and to host records from farm books and calendars. It also made effective in hosting indicator algorithms, making the computational pathway transparent and easily to be checked, fitting with other object-oriented approaches finalised to simulation (Carlson et al., 2009), and easy to host a gap-filling procedure, required because of a lack of information on questionnaires. Such a problem in particular could be due to the quality of farmer response, occurring when a large amount of questionnaires are submitted on a territory, as much as when character of local products are missing: think of manure used as soil amendment or specific varieties for which production or composition should require specific analysis. Production of those precise information would not influence nor policy making nor communication whereas indicators estimates need to be produced in few time and containing costs.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
