Landscape quality on organic farms in the Messara valley, Crete Organic farms as components in the landscape

Two organic farms were evaluated on their landscape value in abroad 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. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.