Ecological impact of organic egg production

In 2006 organic Dutch egg production has grown to a number of 863.000 laying hens. According to the ecological principle of the International Federation of Organic AgriculturalMovements (IFOAM) “organic farming should be based on living ecological systems and cycles, work with them, emulate them and help sustain them” (IFOAM, 2005). Nevertheless, in practice organic egg production has a number of ecological problems: 1) an intensive and international oriented production cycle, 2) a high level of ammonia emission from the hen house and 3) a high load of nitrogen and phosphorus in the outdoor run, resulting in harmful losses into the environment, leaching of nitrate and emissions of ammonia and nitrous oxide.

To evaluate and solve these problems a chain oriented research approach is necessary. Also the offered solutions should optimize ecological, economic and societal sustainability of the production chain as a whole. Based on these two insights the main research question has been formulated: How can ecological sustainability of organic egg production chains as a whole and organic egg production farms in particular, be assessed and improved. To answer this question the following methodology is used. First the ecological impact of the organic egg production process is computed using Life Cycle Assessment. Second important parameters of the main polluting processes will be measured in practice. Third solutions for the main environmental polluting processes are modeled.