alliance of agricultural bioenergy and organic farming topics in scientific literature

• Published in: Organic agriculture Vol. 4; no. 3; pp. 243 - 268
• Main Authors: Siegmeier, Torsten, Blumenstein, Benjamin, Möller, Detlev
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer-Verlag 2014; Springer Netherlands
• Subjects: Agriculture; anaerobic digestion; bioenergy; Biomedical and Life Sciences; crop production; energy; energy crops; Environment; fossil fuels; land use; Life Sciences; organic production; Plant Sciences; society; sustainable agriculture; Sustainable Development; Literature review; Biogas; Keywords; Organic agriculture; Anaerobic digestion; Biofuel sustainability
• ISSN: 1879-4238; 1879-4246
• DOI: 10.1007/s13165-014-0079-x

In view of limited natural resources and the ecological and socioeconomic crises of the past decades, the sustainability of energy supply and the sustainability of land-use systems are major challenges to society. Bioenergy (BES) and organic farming systems (OFS) both gained increasing public and scientific attention as approaches to meet current global challenges by substituting fossil energy sources (BES) and implementing more sustainable farming practices (OFS). However, energy crop production poses new threats to the sustainability of land-use systems, while organic farming also strongly depends on fossil fuels. So not only are bioenergy and organic farming falling short on sustainability issues, they are also interconnected. Therefore, in this review the alliance of BES and OFS in scientific literature is investigated. A systematic procedure for identifying relevant publications is combined with a content analytical approach for reviewing and examining the literature. We describe the status quo and the main contents of scientific publications in the context of OFS and BES in order to produce an overview of research topics, to summarize main findings and to identify research gaps and future research needs. Results show that there are synergetic approaches to integrate OFS and BES which are investigated and discussed in science. Potentials are especially identified and discussed for anaerobic digestion while other BES and topics are underrepresented in the BES/OFS literature. However, many questions remain and new approaches should be evaluated particularly from a systems’ or chain perspective. We conclude that future developments in organic farming will have to integrate the energy perspective. As resources become increasingly scarce and allocation of land is already heavily disputed, a co-development of OFS and BES may be imperative in order to further enhance OFS.