Analysis and improvement of the operational method "criteria for an environmentally compatible agriculture" (KUL)

The last years have shown a growing interest in approaches assessing compre hensively environmental impacts. The method "criteria for an environmentall y compatible agriculture" (KUL), which has been developed at the government al institution for agriculture of Theuringen. is the most discussed approac h concerning environmental assessment on farm scale in Germany. The great p ublic interest leads to the question of the suitability of the method to de scribe and evaluate the environmental effects of a farm in a comprehensive way. The analysis was restricted to three important questions: Does the KUL appr oach consider all relevant environmental impacts of agriculture? Are the in dicators suitable? Are the single results summarized in a comprehensive way ? The analysis reveals potentials fur optimization. Some relevant environme ntal impacts have not been considered yet, including biodiversity on the ar ea of production and animal welfare. The valuation of some indicator result s are combined with demands of productivity. Thereby the presentation of th e environmental effects is distorted. The discussed proposal for a weightin g of the environmental impacts proved to be unbalanced. Inter alia the ener gy balance is given to much weight, whereas landscape and biodiversity is w eighted too low. As a consequence of the determined weak points, the presen t form of the approach KUL is unable to describe high environmental perform ance. On the other hand the demands of productivity favor farms on rich soi l, with high yielding processes and with a relative high management intensi ty. Finally recommendations are given to develop the method KUL into a conseque nt and comprehensive approach for the assessment of environmental impacts. In addition it may serve as a basis for rewarding environmental performance .