Labour requirements

A common objection to many agroecological approaches is their perceived need for increased labour (Tripp (2005) cited by Pretty et al. (2011)). Labour has a cost that many farmers are keen to minimise, and increasing labour productivity is seen as an important driver for economic growth. Higher labour requirements may, therefore, be seen as a disadvantage. At the same time, generating employment for the rural economy is a key objective of rural development policy and also seen as one of the potential additional benefits of agroecology and organic farming (Lobley et al., 2009), particularly if the financial returns generated also contribute to enhanced labour incomes or if opportunities for other members of the farm family are created. In a developing country context, this is very site specific – labour availability is a constraint in some areas (e.g. in areas strongly affected by HIV/AIDS), whereas in other areas where there are few alternatives, generating employment opportunities is welcome (Pretty et al., 2011) This may also be true in UK and other European contexts. For example, Chatterton et al. (2015) highlight the potential employment generation benefits of UK livestock production, co-produced with environmental benefits in pastoral landscapes.

The question of production systems requiring higher labour inputs when chemical inputs are substituted by more labour-intensive practices has been particularly discussed in the context of organic farming. To our knowledge, there is very little robust research into the labour requirements of other types of agroecological farming in Europe33. This is likely, at least in part, to be due to the lack of a commonly accepted definition on which a comparison using existing data sources (e.g. the Farm Accounting Data Network (FADN)34) could be based. Early European studies of labour use on organic farms (based on surveys and an evaluation of labour data in FADN type samples and reviewed by Lampkin (1994), Offermann and

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Nieberg (2000) and Jansen (2000)) indicated that labour-use was higher on organic holdings, particularly on high value horticultural holdings and farms with direct marketing and on-farm processing activities. The overall increase in labour was of the order of 10-20% per holding, but it was not always the case that more labour was required for individual enterprises.

Morison et al. (2005), based on a survey of 1144 organic farms in the UK and the Republic of Ireland compared with results of the Farm Structure Survey, concluded that organic farms employ 35% more labour per farm than conventional farms, but conventional farms employ 80% more labour per hectare, because organic farms were found to be larger than conventional. The difference may be a factor of system comparability, but also reflects that systems with higher production levels and financial output require and can pay for more labour input. Lobley et al. (2005) surveyed organic holdings and captured data on employment and other labour characteristics as part of a study on the impact of organic farms on rural development and concluded that organic farming produces more employment than conventional farms, but organic farms are more likely to employ casual or part-time labour.

In contrast, the annual Organic Farm Incomes in England and Wales reports (most recently Moakes et al. (2013, 2014)35), where the data is differentiated by farm type and compared with comparable conventional farms using a clustering procedure, indicate much lower or no differences in total labour per farm or labour use per hectare for most farm types, raising the question whether the increased labour requirements are restricted to a limited set of specific circumstances. Although yield levels were lower on the organic farms (see section 4.2.3), the financial output generated per labour unit was also similar across the farm types, with slightly better performance on organic livestock farms and slightly worse performance on organic cropping farms, including horticulture where much larger differences in other financial parameters had been identified (see section 4.6.3).

It is also important to consider the nature of any jobs that are created, in particular skills, remuneration and permanence (Jansen, 2000). Unskilled farm labourers, seasonally- employed picking fruit and vegetables, might not qualify as desirable rural employment, but studies investigating this in greater detail remain rare.

Agroforestry also illustrates the dual character of labour becoming an obstacle to adoption as well as an opportunity for creating additional employment, although this is significantly influenced by the design of the system and the potential for mechanisation. Successful tropical agroforestry systems show that management of intercropped systems is often intensive with high manual labour input required. The high cost of manual labour in Europe is thought likely to lead to greater reliance on agrochemical and mechanical input, especially when unfavourable combinations of trees and crops are used (Eichhorn et al., 2006). Within the UK and across parts of Northern Europe, there has been a decline in opportunities for manual employment in rural areas over the last 20 years. Doyle and Thomas (2000) suggest that even where agroforestry displaces traditional, grass-based livestock systems, job gains from the ‘forestry’ component of the system will compensate for any job losses from a reduction in livestock. Where the trees used in agroforestry produce annual products such as fruit and nuts, additional pruning and harvest employment may be created, although this may be casual and insecure rather than permanent employment. There may also be positive implications for local industries supplying inputs and processing outputs from both the agricultural and forestry components of the system.

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