TY - JOUR AU - Ventrella, Domenico AU - Virzì, Nino AU - Intrigliolo, Francesco AU - Palumbo, Massimo AU - Cambrea, Michele AU - Platania, Alfio AU - Sciacca, Fabiola AU - Licciardello, Stefania AU - Troccoli, Antonio AU - Russo, Mario AU - Francaviglia, Rosa AU - Neri, Ulderico AU - Falcucci, Margherita AU - Simonetti, Giampiero AU - Masetti, Olimpia AU - Renzi, Ginaluca AU - Speroni, Marisanna AU - Borrelli, Lamberto AU - Cabassi, Giovanni AU - Degano, Luigi AU - Fuccella, Roberto AU - Savi, Francesco AU - Tagliabue, Paolo AU - Fedrizzi, Marco AU - Fanigliulo, Roberto AU - Pagano, Mauro AU - Sperandio, Giulio AU - Guerrieri, Mirko AU - Puri, Daniele AU - Montemurro, Francesco AU - Vonella, Vittorio Alessandro AU - Giglio, Luisa AU - Fornaro, Francesco AU - Castellini, Mirko AU - Leogrande, Rita AU - Vitti, Carolina AU - Mastrangelo, Marcello AU - Fiore, Angelo AU - Diacono, Mariangela AU - Chiarini, Francesca AU - Fracasso, Francesco AU - Sartori, Erica AU - Barbieri, Antonio AU - Fagotto, Francesco AU - Bazzoffi, Paolo PY - 2015/12/15 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Environmental effectiveness of GAEC cross-compliance Standard 2.1 ‘Maintaining the level of soil organic matter through management of stubble and crop residues’ and economic evaluation of the competitiveness gap for farmers JF - Italian Journal of Agronomy JA - Ital J Agronomy VL - 10 IS - s1 SE - Monitoring farm network MO.NA.CO. DO - 10.4081/ija.2015.697 UR - https://www.agronomy.it/agro/article/view/697 SP - AB - Within the Project MO.NA.CO. the Environmental effectiveness of GAEC cross-compliance Standard 2.2 ‘Maintaining the level of soil organic matter through management of stubble and crop residues’ and economic evaluation of the competitiveness gap for farmers were evaluated. The monitoring was performed in eight experimental farms of the Council for agricultural research and economics (CREA), distributed throughout Italy and with different soil and climatic conditions. Yield parameters and several components of soil organic matter were evaluated in two contrasting treatments applied to one-year rotation of winter durum wheat and maize: i) incorporation into the soil of crop residues (Factual treatment) and ii) burning or removal of crop residues (Counterfactual treatment). The application of the standard ‘crop residue management’ has showed contrasting results with differences (for yield and soil) between the two treatments resulted almost always non significant. The analysis of economic competitiveness gap showed that the CR incorporation is more expensive than CR burning or removal, but the economic disadvantage can be considered rather small and thus easily compensated by Community aids. Therefore, the soil incorporation of crop residues can be considered a ‘good agricultural practice’ that does not penalize farmers in terms of production and cost and at the same time contributes to the maintenance of fertility and soil biodiversity. On the contrary, the removal and burning of residues result in a low or no-addition of organic matter into the soil. Moreover, burning can contribute to decrease the biodiversity and to increase the risk of air pollution, fires and road accidents. ER -