French Quality and Eco-labelling Schemes: Do They Also Benefit the Environment?

With respect to the idea of multifunctional agriculture, one way to raise farmers' environmental stewardship is to reward environmental practices through food quality labelling schemes. The objective of our study was to identify existing relationships between the production of quality food and the production of environmental goods at farm level. In this article, we report the results of analyses conducted to examine the effects of major `quality' and `eco-labelling' schemes in the Midi-Pyrenees region of the south of France. Factor analysis and analysis of variance were used with a data set of 107 farms - some participating in the labelling schemes and some not participating - for which environmental scores had been assigned. The statistical analyses were complemented by a qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews of 85 farmers and review of the labelling standard guidelines. This study shows that organic farms and farms enrolled in various quality and eco-labelling programmes in France do provide some environmental benefits. However, they do not necessarily perform better than other farms on all environmental measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]