Providing Organic Products and their Ecosystem Services at Different Spatial Scales: Insights from Economics
Production agricole biologique et fourniture de services écosystémiques à différentes échelles spatiales : apports et limites de l'analyse économique
Résumé
In spite of a growing social demand for organic products and its capacity to enhance ecosystem services, organic farming remains largely under the targets. Economics tools still face scales issues due to the economic nature of organic products combined to the persistent uncertainty about its scientific measure. We develop a range of issues in organic farming provision in the light of scales changes. First, we present the definition of the status of organic farming in standard economics and the risk of market failures. Then, we detail the existing solutions and investigate their pertinence facing scales discordance. In a third section, we present the methods of evaluation of the willingness to pay of consumers. We stress the influence of scales issues on results. Finally, we present the agro-environmental policy for organic farming and imbrications between policies’ efficiency and scales choices.