The objective of the FarmLife Biodiversity module for agricultural businesses was demonstrated in combination with the existing life cycle assessment:
- How can eco-efficiency be analyzed and how are the results presented for the farm's own analysis?
- Which environmental impacts of the company, which can be influenced by operational management, become apparent?
- And how can biodiversity be integrated as another key performance indicator into the FarmLife farm management tool, so that farmers also have this information available?
FarmLife Biodiversity Points System
The FarmLife Biodiversity points system was developed in analogy to the Swiss Biodiversity points system (www.agri-biodiv.ch). This system was jointly developed by the Swiss Ornithological Institute, IP-SUISSE , and FiBL and has been implemented on farms and undergoing accompanying evaluation for more than 10 years (References: Jenny et al. 2009, 2015, Birrer et al. 2014, Zellweger-Fischer et al. 2016, Graf et al. 2016, Meichtry-Stier et al. 2018).
Of the many aspects of agricultural management, the following are particularly taken into account for the FarmLife biodiversity score:
- Areas – different uses, subdivision
- Farm – rare plants and animals, nitrogen efficiency, farmstead, etc.
- Management of grassland, arable land, vegetables, fruit, and vineyards
- Type and intensity of use
- Structural/landscape elements
- Specific measures
- Certain indicator plants
The event organized by the network werk zukunfts raum land was generally about discussing different approaches and experiences with biodiversity assessment in agriculture among a group of experts.
Several approaches already exist for assessing and presenting the biodiversity impacts of products. Therefore, the different methods for determining the biodiversity footprint of products should be discussed within a group of experts, and at the same time, the question of how biodiversity services provided by agricultural products can be incorporated into food labeling should be explored.
The FarmLife tool for biodiversity is currently under further development and is scheduled to enter the testing phase on the first farms in 2022.
