The Biodiversity Benefits of Organic Farming

The report was written for a number of specific reasons:

• There is an urgent need to identify widely applicable and efficient ways of reversing the current decline in farmland wildlife.

• Organic farming currently accounts for only a small proportion of UK farmland, but is rapidly growing in significance. Three per cent of the agricultural land is now managed organically; this is growing by an additional one per cent of the total agricultural land each year.

• The organic movement has long claimed important biodiversity benefits from organic farming but insufficient evidence has been available.

• There is a large and growing public interest in organic farming and its benefits.

• A number of studies have been carried out investigating the biodiversity levels of organic farms. Their findings were consistent and important but not well known.