Book of Abstracts
11th IFOAM
Scientific Conference
11-15 August 1996
Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract front page
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Agriculture and climate S4

Vogtmann, Hardy; Zehr, Matthias; Simon, Karl-Heinz

Hessisches Landesamt fuer Regionalentwicklung und Landwirtschaft,D-34117 Kassel, 2) University of Kassel, WZ III, D-34117 Kassel

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The study was conducted for the German Enquete-Commission for the protection of the atmosphere by an interdisciplinary working group for agriculture and the food system in Germany. Besides the discription of the status quo (1991) proposals were made for the reduction of negative climatic impacts with view to agriculture, food processing and nutrition.

The method of process - chain - analysis was employed, using individual processes which were discribed in a data bank combined to complex process chains. The advantage of this method is to allow not only the quantification of the amounts of primary energy or materials, but also the amount of primary energy which is used to provide these primary materials. The analysis is based on the production of 50 mio tons of food produced in Germany. For this amount 200 mio tons of total material turnover is necessary with a primary energy demand of 600 PJ. In addition a yearly energy use for transportation and packaging material is 100 PJ and 170 PJ respectivly. The calculated total climatic emissions are 260 mio tons CO2 equivalent for 80 mio Germans or 3200 kg CO2 equivalent per person and year. For the agricultural production 135 mio tons CO2 equivalent are produced (animal production 115, plant production 20). This illustrates that agricultural production is of great importance with regard to energy use and the correlated production of climatic relevant gases (especially animal production). A conversion to ecological agriculture would lead to a significant reduction of the negative climatic impacts, e.g.: conventional versus ecological agriculture (energy input per kg animal product), milk -6.56 vs 2.86; beef - 22,50 vs 12,28; pork - 10.85 vs 8.64.

Bossel, H., Meier-Ploeger, A., Vogtmann, H. (1995):Landwirtschaft und Ernährung. Quantitative Analysen und Fallstudien (Teilbericht A) und ihre klimatische Relevanz (Teil B).Veränderungstendenzen im Ernährungssystem. In: Enquete-Kommission »Schutz der Erdatmosphaere« des Deutschen Bundestages (Hrsg.): Landwirtschaft Studienprogramm, Teilband II. S. 5-189 Economica Verlag Bonn, ISBN 3-87081-454-3