Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 79–93
Landscape quality on organic farms in the Messara valley, Crete Organic farms as components in the landscape
Derk Jan Stobbelaar
a ,
∗
, Juliëtte Kuiper
b
, Jan Diek van Mansvelt
a
, Emmanouil Kabourakis
c
a
Wageningen Agricultural University, Group Biological Farming Systems, Haarweg 333, 6709 RZ Wageningen, The Netherlands
b
Wageningen Agricultural University, Group Landscape Architecture Haarweg 333, Wageningen, The Netherlands
c
Cretan Agri-environmental Group, Research and Development Unit, PO Box 59, 70400 Moires, Crete, Greece Accepted 19 July 1999
Abstract
Two organic farms were evaluated on their landscape value in a broad perspective and compared with the surrounding non-organic farms. Therefore, a checklist with abiotic, social and cultural criteria was used. Firstly, an overview of the
qualities of the Cretan landscape is given, which secondly, gives a framework to determine in how far the farms contribute to the landscape qualities. Thirdly, the scoring of the two described organic farms are compared with each other. This leads to
the conclusion that the larger organic farm performs better than the smaller, especially concerning the abiotic environment. The cause of this difference in landscape performance may lie in the different social organisation of the two farms. However,
when comparing the two farms with the conventional surrounding, both farms perform pretty well. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Checklist; Sustainability; Landscape quality: Organic agriculture; Crete
1. Introduction
This article reports on the use of the checklist en- titled: ‘Criteria for the development of sustainable ru-
ral landscapes’ from now on referred to as: check- list Van Mansvelt and Stobbelaar, 1997; Stobbelaar
and van Mansvelt, 2000 in a specific European land- scape, on the island of Crete, Greece. The check-
list is a condensation of key issues for the quality of a sustainable landscape. It combines many ideas
on landscape quality, of many landscape experts,
∗
Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-317-484678; fax: +31-317-484995
E-mail address: derk.janstobbelaarusers.eco.wau.nl D.J. Stobbe- laar
meeting in the framework of an EU AIR-3 Concerted Action The landscape and nature production capac-
ity of organicsustainable types of agriculture AIR3 CT94-1296. The checklist has been developed in an
iterative process of plenary and subgroup-meetings, during the last 4 years. New in this approach is the
comprehensive and integrating concept, merging so called ‘hard’ and so called ‘soft’ criteria in one check-
list. This new approach is needed to counteract the contraproductive effects of the EU regional measure-
ments that focus on single-issue support. The checklist enables to evaluate the effect of measurements, like EU
regulation 207892, which includes the stimulation of organic agriculture. The checklist should give general
targets, although a local commitment on parameters for reaching these targets is needed. A quick evalua-
0167-880900 – see front matter ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 8 8 0 9 9 9 0 0 0 9 4 - 8
80 D.J. Stobbelaar et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 77 2000 79–93
tion of farms in relation to the surrounding landscape, as described in this contribution, can only be done with
the help of local experts among others farmers. In this respect, a clear protocol on how to use the check-
list by laymen is needed.
The objective of this paper is to evaluate current land use practises on the island of Crete and to give
recommendations for the improvement of land use viz. landscape, both on practical farm level and for regional
policy. In other words, to assess the practical use of the checklist. Note that the checklist can be used on
several levels e.g., farm level, regional level, accord- ing to the demands of the users Stobbelaar and van
Mansvelt, 2000.
2. Background and method
