Environmental degradation and consumer awareness are raising concerns about the sustainability of conventional farming while increasing interest in organic farming as an alternative food and fiber production. Well-replicated studies during the transition are necessary for testing the causes of observed changes. To test soil property changes following conversion, we collected data from 18 dairy farms (nine converting and nine that remained under conventional methods) in the Waikato, Taranaki, and Manawatu regions of New Zealand. Soil properties on the converting group were compared with matched farms that continued with conventional methods. Converting to organic did not result in increased total carbon or nitrogen, but phosphorus decreased by 42%. Bulk density decreased by 3.5% in converted farms but increased by 9.8% in conventional farms. Earthworm densities were higher in organic farms but there was no significant change in soil microbial parameters. Total nitrogen was lower where microbial respiration was higher but there was no evidence of a link between earthworms and soil nutrient levels. This observation challenges whether the observed changes in studies of farms that have already converted are indeed caused by organic farming methods themselves. Long-term studies are needed before the broader implications of conversion can be fully assessed.

Our review concludes that organic standards need to account for a broader set of criteria in order to retain claims to ‘sustainability’. Measurements of the ecological, economic and social outcomes from over 96 kiwifruit, sheep/beef and dairy farms in New Zealand between 2004 and 2012 by The Agricultural Research Group on Sustainability (ARGOS) project showed some enhanced ecosystem services from organic agriculture that will assist a “land-sharing” approach for sustainable land management. However, the efficiency of provisioning services is reduced in organic systems and this potentially undermines a “land-sparing” strategy to secure food security and ecosystem services. Other aspects of the farm operation that are not considered in the organic standards sometimes had just as much or even a greater effect on ecosystem services than restriction of chemical inputs and synthetic fertilisers. An organic farming version of the New Zealand Sustainability Dashboard will integrate organic standards and wider agricultural best practice into a broad and multidimensional sustainability assessment framework and package of learning tools. There is huge variation in performance of farms within a given farming system. Therefore improving ecosystem services depends as much on locally tuned learning and adjustments of farm practice on individual farms as on uptake of organic or Integrated Management farming system protocols.

New Zealand’s pastoral livestock farm systems, once predominantly breeding/finishing properties geared towards the commodity market have become increasingly diverse niche market producers leading to the development of additional farm management styles such as organic and integrated management. Farmers implementing these systems produce to specific standards, which may constrain their otherwise conventional management style. ARGOS, a research project with the aim to investigate the economic, environmental, and social differences between organic, integrated and conventional systems of production, has collected 4 years of meat production data from 36 South Island sheep and beef farms and has used this to measure physical production differences between Organic, Integrated and Conventional sheep/beef farms. Net meat export was used as the performance indicator to compare these farming systems. Organic management systems had 60% net meat export of integrated and conventional systems for lamb however variability within the management systems masked significant differences for carcass weight sold or the distribution of monthly sales and purchases. Likewise there were no significant differences between management systems when the net meat export values was used as a measure of production efficiency based on the net meat exported as a percentage of sheep wintered.