Evaluation of Technological, Economic and Social Indicators for Different Farming Practices in Lithuania

DOI: 10.14254/2071789X.2017/10-4/15 ABSTRACT. Organic and integrated farming practices contribute to protecting biodiversity, reducing environmental pollution, improving soil quality, and providing high-quality raw material for food industry. The objective of the article is to establish the methodology and evaluate the system of indicators, which enables answering the question which farming practice has more advantages: organic or integrated? Multi-criteria analysis methods were used to achieve this objective. When being compared with between conventional and integrated farming practices, organic farming practice achieves higher profitability and greater energy efficiency. Organic farming reveals to be either superior, or similar to integrated farming practices in environmental terms. Potatoes, fruits and berries under both conventional and integrated farming practices have obtained the same rank (1–2) according to the selected criterions (yield, share of sold product, expenses on plant protection, production cost, price and labour input). Organic farming practice has shown worse rank. Organic farming practice has appeared to be the most suitable for vegetables.

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