2.8: Agriculture and Forestry
To provide integrated analyses of land use trends in agriculture and forestry through assessments of their current and future
impact on water, soils, air quality, biodiversity and landscapes. This will help to assess the impact of new societal demands,
demographic and technological trends on the natural environment and form a basis for policy evaluation and feedback into related
sectoral and environmental policies.
Other Information:
Analysis - The use of agricultural and forestry land in Europe for producing primary material (food, feed, biomass for energy
and material purposes) will become more intensive in the coming decades. This derives from new demands, advances in technology
(e.g. enzymatic digestion of cellulosic material, engineering of food properties, crop breeding including genetically modified
organisms etc.) and changes in farming practices. Forestry and agriculture increasingly deliver into shared end uses for buildings,
energy and biomaterials, which lead to higher demands on the available land area. The expected impacts of climate change and
land conversion for the urban and service sectors will increase resulting pressures on water and soil resources as well as
affect biodiversity, landscapes and air quality. The EEA has worked on agri-environment indicators, developed the concept
of high nature value farmland and investigated policy integration, e.g. with regard to bioenergy production. Action - We will
achieve our objective by: • integrating economic and biophysical models and data to assess the driving forces behind the environmental
impacts of socio-economic trends to inform sector policy debates, in agriculture, bio-energy and rural development policies;
• extending sector-related indicator sets, spatial analyses and databases on farm practices and new land use trends, e.g.
the combined impact of food, feed and biomass production on water resources, fertiliser and pesticide use, tillage methods,
livestock housing, in cooperation with Commission Services and UNEP; • undertaking assessments of critical issues such as
the carbon balance associated with land use change, both within Europe and globally, examine the environmental impacts of
alien species and genetically modified crops especially for bioenergy and fibre; • supporting efforts to develop environmental
and ecosystem accounts to inform analyses of adaptation to and mitigation of climate change and provide these as inputs to
the EEA's assessments including Eureca 2012 and SOER 2010.
Indicator(s):
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