Chris KjeldsenAarhus University | AU · Department of Agroecology
Chris Kjeldsen
PhD
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69
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801
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
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January 2010 - present
Publications
Publications (69)
Upland landscapes provide important ecosystem services (ES) to society. One cultural ES– nature-based recreational tourism (NBR) – is a growing industry in upland regions that provides an important revenue to areas where other industries are often in decline. NBR tourism is a service that relies partly on the aesthetic appearance of the landscape a...
Farmers are key actors in the transition towards sustainable agricultural practices. Therefore, it is important to understand farmers’ motivations to encourage lasting change. This study investigated how farmers from the two different social contexts of the northeast US and Denmark perceive sustainability. Twenty farmers constructed Fuzzy Cognitive...
A Danish pre-industrial farming system is reconstructed and compared to its modern industrialized farming system equivalent to evaluate agricultural performance in a sustainability perspective. The investigated Danish farm system and its contributing elements have undergone significant transformations. The intensity of contemporary agriculture show...
Upland landscapes provide important ecosystem services (ES) to society. One cultural ES - nature-based recreational tourism (NBR) - is a growing industry in upland regions that provides an important revenue to areas where other industries are often in decline. NBR tourism is a service that relies partly on the aesthetic appearance of the landscape....
Agricultural land use and population density have been increasing around the world. Determining if physical geography is a driving factor of historical change on a larger scale has received little research interest in the past outside local-scale case studies. The aim of this study was to model historical agricultural development and population den...
This study generally aimed to assess and determine factors that correlate the public perceptions of agriculture and environmental protection in the Danish population. Firstly, the study specifically identifies the relationship between socioeconomic factors (i.e., age, gender, education, and income) and public perceptions; and secondly, to ascertain...
ContextExcess use of nitrogen fertilizer in agricultural landscapes is a threat to aquatic ecosystems, with effects manifesting at the scale of watersheds encompassing many farms. Collaborative processes involving farmers may be needed to achieve policies and decisions that are legitimate and sustainable in the long-term. Doing so depends on how ar...
Agriculture needs a radical transition towards a more sustainable model. Multi-Level Perspective has gained prominence as a framework for analysing sustainable transitions. However, Multi-Level Perspective has received criticism for the unclear operationalization of its hierarchical levels and bias towards bottom-up change. This longue durée study...
Regulation of nitrogen (N) loss from the agri-environment is a global challenge with dire consequences for food production and environmental management. This is also the case in Denmark where regulation largely relies on general measures for reducing N inputs. These measures have significantly reduced nitrogen emissions, but further reduction is ne...
The aim of this chapter is to present the Danish Nitrogen Mitigation Assessment (www.DNMARK.org), an ongoing five-year multidisciplinary research alliance, focusing on the quantification of nitrogen (N) flows and solutions scenarios for a more sustainable N use in Denmark. As one of the world’s most agriculturally intensive countries, with a long N...
Soil quality is in decline in many parts of the world, in part due to the intensification of agricultural practices. Whilst economic instruments and regulations can help incentivise uptake of more sustainable soil management practices, they rarely motivate long-term behavior change when used alone. There has been increasing attention towards the co...
Soil quality is in decline in many parts of the world, in part due to the intensification of agricultural practices. Whilst economic instruments and regulations can help incentivise uptake of more sustainable soil management practices, they rarely motivate long-term behavior change when used alone. There has been increasing attention towards the co...
Soil quality is in decline in many parts of the world, in part due to the intensification of agricultural practices. Whilst economic instruments and regulations can help incentivise uptake of more sustainable soil management practices, they rarely motivate long-term behavior change when used alone. We are now beginning to pay attention to the compl...
Soils are the foundation for agricultural production, ecosystem functioning and for human well-being, but
paradoxically only limited attention has been given towards sustainable soil management in most national and
European policies. Preventing subsoil compaction is essential for ensuring soil functions and ecosystem services,
because subsoil compa...
Food distribution systems referred to as box schemes have gained a foothold in organic markets across Europe and North America. This model has the potential to scale up direct-marketing strategies by aggregating products from multiple producers and efficiently assembling and delivering them on a regular basis to large networks of consumers. Box sch...
In 2014, a radical shift took place in Danish water planning. Following years of a top-down water planning approach, 23 regional water councils were established to co-create and provide input to Danish authorities on the development of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP). The water councils advised local authorities on the application of measures t...
The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expre...
Under the Water Framework Directive, public participation was identified as a key part of water planning. This caused a paradigm shift in Danish water planning. Water councils in River Basin Districts were established to provide public input on how to improve the physical conditions in streams. A study of the water councils found that Denmark has c...
What kind of futures does agro-food imaginaries enable and who can get involved in the making of agro-food futures? In this respect, what can the increasingly influential idea of circular economy potentially offer in terms of enabling more sustainable agrofood futures? We approach this task by first outlining the interconnected challenges that the...
Ruminant production systems are important producers of food, support rural communities and culture, and help to maintain a range of ecosystem services including the sequestering of carbon in grassland soils. However, these systems also contribute significantly to climate change through greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while intensification of produc...
In this paper we investigate Pig City; a project that proposes to combine pig-, tomato- and energy production. We argue that Pig City was an experiment challenging the established trajectory of the Danish pig production industry. Utilizing sensibilities from science and technology studies and actor-network theory we follow Pig City and the heteroge...
Over the past few decades, many food niches have emerged with a specific focus on quality. In specialty coffee, micro roasters have brought about Direct Trade coffee as a way of organising an alternative around new tastes and qualities through ongoing and ‘direct’ relations to farmers and cooperatives. But Direct Trade also involves exporters. We a...
Agricultural environmental regulation often fails to deliver the desired effects because of farmers adopting the related measures incorrectly or not at all. This is due to several barriers to the uptake of the prescribed environmentally beneficial farm management practices, most of which have been well established by social science research. Yet it...
Vegetable intake seems to play a protective role against major lifestyle diseases. Despite this, the Danish population usually eats far less than the recommended daily intake. The present study focused on the intake of 17 coarse vegetables and the potential barriers limiting their intake. The present study drew upon a large Danish survey (n=1079) t...
Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) are often mentioned as a way to reconfigure the link between producers and consumers and build trust in the food system. This article explores the function, configuration and generation of trust in AFNs. The structure is twofold. First we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of trust, in both recent AFN literature...
I 2014 kom et nybrud i dansk vandforvaltning ved etableringen af de første vandråd. Et nybrud, fordi vi ser en bevægelse mod en vandforvaltning, hvor aktiv involvering bliver central for en effek-tiv planlægning.
Men hvilke traditioner bevæger vi os fra? Og hvor er planlægningen på vej hen, når aktiv involvering bliver
omdrejningspunktet for vandfo...
Solutions to complex environmental problems and the need for a sustainable management of nitrogen in regions with intensive agriculture are becoming increasingly important worldwide. In Europe efforts have been made during the last two decades to reduce nutrient inputs from wastewater discharge and agriculture, the reduced nutrient discharge has le...
Accounts of the ‘quality turn’ in agro-food literature suggest that there is a potential for growth in the market for ‘high-quality’ food, which utilises distinct notions like ‘quality’ and ‘place.’ These food chains are typically described as ‘alternative.’ Alterity might stem from alternative social or physical geographies of such food chains. Th...
This study presents a new approach to model the biophysical potentials for increased biomass harvest in Denmark, and a multi-criteria sustainability assessment of the socio-economic and environmental effects of different scenarios for such increased production and new biobased economy in rural landscapes. Thereby the results serve as input to the o...
The aim of this study is to illustrate the importance of farm scale heterogeneity on nitrogen (N) losses in agricultural landscapes. Results are exemplified with a chain of N models calculating farm-N balances and distributing the N-surplus to N-losses (volatilisation, denitrification, leaching) and soil-N accumulation/release in a Danish landscape...
The direct payment system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income transfers to European farmers. Recently, several countries including England and Sweden have advocated the elimination of direct payments after 2013. The extent to which an elimination of direct payments would affect the land use dynamics in Europe including impacts o...
The direct payment system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provides income transfers to European farmers. Recently, several countries including England and Sweden have advocated the elimination of direct payments after 2013. The extent to which an elimination of direct payments would affect the land use dynamics in Europe including impacts o...
In debates on rural development, attention has often been directed toward the role of the agricultural sector and its relations to the state, subsidy programs and voluntary associations. However, we should not forget the importance of innovative private entrepreneurs outside agriculture. These people tend to invest a lot of time and energy in build...
Bourdieu's (1986) General Theory of the Economy of Practices assumes that people perpetually transform tangible and intangible forms of capital according to certain 'laws of conversion'. On this background, and combining sociology and micro-economics, we analyze specific strings of capital conversion in time and space. More specifically, we raise t...
We used a farm-level modeling approach to estimate on-farm compliance costs and environmental effects of a grassland extensification scheme in the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Germany. The behavior of the regional farm population (n = 585) consisting of different farm types with different production orientations and grassland types was modeled...
The MEA-Scope project developed, and applied a modelling approach that allows for the ex ante assessment of sustainability impacts of new policies, technologies and market changes. Thereby, the agricultural production at farm level and its effect on social, economic and environmental assets under changing circumstances is examined. The MEA-Scope mo...
A validation of the agent-based model AgriPoliS by back casting is presented. The agent-based model AgriPoliS is calibrated to a Danish agricultural catchment. The model was supplied with empirical data on the exact location of individual plots as well as farm characteristics of 2,383 individual farms covering the period 1998-2004. Validation was c...
Societal demand for the multi functionality of agriculture was analysed in four case-study regions by studying stakeholders' perceptions of regional priorities. We used the Stakeholder Delphi Approach, which is a qualitative, two-step procedure, based on revealed preferences of a principal consisting of stakeholders and experts from the regions. Th...
This chapter presents upscaling methodologies, implemented in the MEA-Scope strategic research project. MEA-scope is based on a bottom-up approach, where farm information are collected for landscapes in Germany, Slovakia, Poland, France, Hungary, Italy and Denmark. This chapter is about the upscaling from farm to landscape level, and focuses on the...
This study uses spatial location of farms as a case of recreating context in spatial modelling of agricultural landscapes. When working with generally available agricultural structural data such as FADN data, spatial reference on farm location is not available. This means that methods to reliable recreations of spatial context must be developed. Th...
The organic movement has its roots in a critical attitude towards the capitalist development of farming and food systems and constitutes in that sense an alternative to conventional food systems. The article aims at exploring which meaning the notions of ‘alternative’ and ‘conventional’ carry, using the historical development of organic food in Den...
Much progress has been made in understanding future trend development over the last years. Governments and international bodies are increasingly attempting to assess ex-ante the impact of their policy proposals. In the SENSOR project, environmental sustainability is assessed by answering a set of policy relevant questions likely to affect goods and...
Much progress has been made in understanding future trend development over the last years. Governments and international bodies are increasingly attempting to assess ex-ante the impact of their policy proposals. In the SENSOR project, environmental sustainability is assessed by answering a set of policy relevant questions likely to affect goods and...
Management practises are actually designed CO-oriented. Following the societal demand for implementing multifunctional agriculture it is necessary to examine in how far the existing management practices are as well feasible to produce NCOs or in how far they are multifunctionally sound (jointly CO/NCO oriented). Multifunctional joint production has...
This book provides an overview of the potential role of organic agriculture in a global perspective. Initially, the book provides a description of global trends in agriculture followed by discussions on sustainability, globalization and the relatively new concepts of 'ecological justice' and 'political ecology'. Different views on economy and trade...
Facilitation of sustainable rural development has a high priority on the European Union policy agenda and extensive research on this subject has been started. This paper presents results from the strategic EU research project MEA-scope (www.MEA-scope.org), and the development of a GIS-based framework to model farm and landscape scale indicators for...
This paper presents results from the strategic EU research project MEA-scope (www.MEA-scope.org), which aims at the development of a GIS-based framework to model farm and landscape scale indicators for rural sustainability. Problems in scaling information between the farm- and the landscape levels in particular are addressed. Both disaggregation an...
The aims of organic farming include the recycling of nutrients and organic matter and the minimisation of the environmental impact of agriculture. Reduced nitrogen (N)-losses and energy (E)-use are therefore fundamental objectives of conversion to organic farming. However, the case is not straightforward, and different scenarios for conversion to o...
Projects
Projects (2)
The Danish food sector is losing jobs, and producers face a long-term trend of income problems. Agriculture is challenged with regards to compliance with the EU habitat- and water directives, which indicate the need for differentiating land use in Denmark. There is thus significant economic, societal and environmental potential in agricultural diversification through developing Danish provenance foods. We explore barriers and opportunities for the creation of provenance food products in collaboration with regional stakeholders
The overall objective of this project is to develop new tools and strategies to increase consumption and production of bitter and strong tasting root vegetables and cabbages with high phytochemical content and high consumer preferences targeted specific consumer groups.