ENVIRONMENTAL AUDITING IN AGRICULTURE - PIPE DREAM OR PRACTICAL TOOL

Many non-agricultural businesses have environmental policies and seek to measure their impact on the environment through environmental audit ing, In essence this requires that certain attributes of the company's interaction with the environment are quantified and monitored over ti me. In addition to enhancing environmental protection, financial advan tages may also accrue from this process, and in theory the concept sho uld be transferable to the agricultural situation. In practice, agricu ltural environmental auditing currently plays a role in ensuring compl iance with certain production standards associated with 'quality' mark eting schemes. Such schemes are unlikely to deliver environmental bene fits on a large scale, but the alternative of a centrally organized au diting scheme which is related to payments from agricultural support b udgets is probably too complex to be practicable.