The use of emergy assessment and the Geographical Information System in the diagnosis of small family farms in Brazil (original) (raw)
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Reconciling technical, economic and environmental efficiency of farming systems in vulnerable areas
Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment
Integrated assessment tools are used ever more frequently for solving new environmental, social, and economic challenges related to agriculture sustainability. This is particularly relevant in ecologically vulnerable areas, where mitigation options include a complete redefinition of farming systems. This paper presents an assessment of mitigation options of a coastal agricultural watershed affected by algal proliferations (Lieue de Grève, western France).
ABSTRACT The green revolution has removed constraints on productivity growth in agriculture but at considerable environmental and social cost. The heavy application of fertilizers and pesticides containing certain undesirable elements (such as toxic residual of nitrate) may create negative externalities such as water and air pollution. Because of the high social costs of chemical fertilizers, it is crucial that nutrient uptake used by crops should be also socially optimal to ensure an optimal economic return from money invested in the use of fertilizers with less external pollution costs. At least, there are three approaches that can be introduced to handle the environmental problems: command control approach, market mechanism, and sustainable farming system. However, market based policy and promoting sustainable agricultural systems get much more attention in recent decades. Empirical studies prevailed that application of those environmental policies could reduce both farm production and profits. Apart from the market-based policies, farmers must be encouraged to apply sustainable farming systems. The implementation of crop rotation or cropping patterns, which can reduce fertilizer application rates, may be considered as a crucial choice of handling environmental problems. Then, farmers who adopt the sustainable farming system may be given some subsidies to compensate the loss due to the application of the system.
Fems Microbiology Ecology, 2002
Agricultural researchers widely recognise the importance of sustainable agricultural production systems and the need to develop appropriate methods to measure sustainability. The principal purpose of this paper is to evaluate the financial and environmental aspects of sustainability of Organic, Integrated and Conventional Farming Systems (OFS, IFS, and CFS, respectively) at farm and more detailed spatial scales. This is achieved applying an integrated economic-environmental accounting framework to three case study farms in Tuscany including different farming systems and different spatial scales. The environmental performances of the FS were measured through the application of an Environmental Accounting Information Systems (EAIS) at field, site and farm level. The EAIS indicators were then integrated with (1) a set of financial indicators to evaluate the economic and environmental trade-offs between different FS and (2) with information on the regional and site-specific soil and climate conditions to study the impact of different pedo-climates on the environmental performances of the FS. The gross margins of steady-state OFS were found to be from 5,6 % to 8,6 % higher than the corresponding CFS gross margins. OFS perform better than I/CFS with respect to nitrogen losses (12,1-21,0 versus 33,3-38,8 kgN/ha), pesticide impact (0 versus 1-41 score/ha), herbaceous plant biodiversity (69-124 versus 52-117 score/ha) and most of the other environmental indicators. However, on hilly soils, erosion revealed to be higher in OFS than in CFS (3,9 versus 1,4 t/ha). The pesticide and the nitrogen indicators showed, for this example, that the environmental impact due to integrated and conventional farming practices is similar. Regional pedo-climatic factors resulted to have a considerable impact on nutrient losses, soil erosion, pesticide impact and herbaceous plant biodiversity, site-specific factors on nutrient losses and soil erosion. Results at the field level suggest that herbaceous plant biodiversity and crop production are not always conflicting variables. Conclusions are drawn on the possible practical applications of the method for environmental measures in the agricultural sector.
Field Actions Science Reports. The journal of field actions, 2012
The root cause of agricultural land degradation and decreasing productivity-as seen in terms of loss of soil health-is our low soilcarbon farming paradigm of intensive tillage which disrupts and debilitates many important soilmediated ecosystem functions. For the most part agricultural soils in tillagebased farming without organic surface residue protection are becoming destructured and compacted, exposed to increased runoff and erosion, and soil life and biodiversity is deprived of habitat and starved of organic matter, leading to decrease in soil's biological recuperating capacity. Conservation Agriculture (CA) is a cropping system based on no or minimum mechanical soil disturbance, permanent organic mulch soil cover, and crop diversiication. It, is an effective solution to stopping agri cultural land degradation, for rehabilitation, and for sustainable crop production intensiication. CA is now adopted by large and small farmers on some 125 million hectares across all continents and is spreading at an annual rate of about 7 million hectares. Advantages offered by CA to farmers include better livelihood and income, decrease in inancial risks, and climate change adaptability and mitigation. For the small manual farmer, CA offers ultimately up to 50% labour saving, less drudgery, stable yields, and improved food security. To the mechanised farmers CA offers lower fuel use and less machinery and maintenance costs, and reduced inputs and cost of production (including labour when CA involves the use of integrated weed management. In propoor development programmes, every effort should be made to help producers adopt CA production systems. This is because CA produces more from less, can be adopted and practiced by smallholder poor farmers, builds on the farmer's own natural resource base, does not entirely depend on purchased derived inputs, and is relatively less costly in the early stages of production intensiication.
Enhancing Environmental Quality in Agricultural Systems
Acta Horticulturae, 2003
Greenhouses have been extremely successful in providing abundant, cheap and high-quality produce, by using resources (water, minerals, pesticides) with a very high economic efficiency. Marginal agricultural land is being rapidly converted into protected cultivation in many (semi-arid) regions of the world, hoping to prosper both from primary and secondary activities. Water use efficiency of greenhouse production is about five times as high as field production of vegetables. However, in spite of using resources more efficiently, greenhouse areas have an enormous visual and environmental impact: diversion of limited good water resources; contamination due to pollutants released with over-abundant irrigation; production of plastic and mineral waste and biological by-products; contamination due to plant protection chemicals and emission of "greenhouse" gases (CO 2) by heating with fossil fuels in Northern countries. In addition, greenhouse production has an "image" problem: there is a general perception among European consumers that such an "industrial" production of food is non-natural and unhealthy, although in the Americas, for instance, the "cleanliness" of the production process is considered an advantage. Since, the "polluter pays" very seldom, environment-friendly production is more expensive. Therefore a large market in "eco-labels" has developed in response to consumers' misgivings and in the hope of recovering (part of) the costs through higher prices. However, there is little clarity about agricultural practices associated to each label and there are doubts about enforcement. This paper analyses advantages and drawbacks of greenhouse production, and attempts to review the items where improvement is necessary in order to ensure that greenhouse production is sustainable, yet profitable also in the future.
Environmental Aspects of Sustainable Agriculture
Civil and Environmental Engineering Reports
Agricultural policy in the European Union at Community level, as well as in the member states, increasingly emphasises the issue of sustainable agriculture. The pursuit of climate neutrality requires a reduction in emissions from agricultural sources. Above all, it is necessary to fully exploit the potential of agricultural and forestry areas to increase carbon sequestration in biomass and soil, optimise systems for the storage, transport and use of livestock manure, and significantly improve energy efficiency and increase the share of renewable energy in plant and livestock production. Rural areas, and in particular agriculture, are also seen as one of the main and important sources of pollution and eutrophication of water. Determining the correct way to assess the degree of sustainability of farms requires objective and feasible to determine measures and indicators of socioeconomic-environmental sustainability and a lot of analysis, methodological and practical research. To date, ...
Potencial De Ecoinovação Em Agroecologia
Revista Brasileira de Gestão e Desenvolvimento Regional, 2021
In the context of the environmental crisis, this study aimed to identify and analyze the potential of eco-innovation in agroecological production in Brazil, by mapping the demand for technological information from users on the access platform to the Brazilian Technical Response Service (SBRT). To this end, we applied the quantitative research methodology, based on the survey of technical responses and technical dossiers related to the following keywords: "sustainability", "sustainable development" and "environment" specifically in the sector of agriculture, which contains 2068 technical documents. As a result of the research, only 79 responses and technical dossiers were retrieved, equivalent to 3,8% of the total documentary sample, having been accessed by 1628 users, representing 41% of the total number of unique accesses to the collection. Regarding the technological information contained in these documents, 38% are associated with organic agriculture, while 24% were categorized as "alternative agricultural practices". The results demonstrate the potential of eco-innovation in agroecology, but also reveal the low contribution of SBRT to the theme and the business profile studied. Therefore, an accurate assessment of the issue of eco-innovation in agroecology is suggested, based on field research, the study of which will contribute to a better understanding of this business profile and support future strategies within the scope of the SBRT, in favor of its engagement with commitments made in global agreements to deal with the environmental crisis.
Economic and Environmental Sustainability of Farms from Three Different Brazilian Regions
2003
Using the technique of "panels" farms were drawn as representatives from three regions of Brazil: the first was a medium size farm representing the grain production area of Northern Rio Grande do Sul State; the second, a large farm from the grain and livestock production area of Mato Grosso State; the third, a very large farm from the Amazonian livestock production area of Pará State. The long-term cost of production was estimated and the yearly average net income was evaluated for each typical farm. An "emergy" evaluation table, prepared according to procedures described by Odum (1996), was used to estimate each farm process of incorporating energy into its production as a way to evaluate the sustainability of the farms systems. A four quadrant reference system, based on the average measurements for each vector-environmental accounting and net farm income-allowed the plotting of the three farms on the designed quadrants. The null hypothesis indicates that sustainable farms must be plotted on the southwest and on the northeast quadrants. The presence of farms on either of the two non-expected quadrants, the northwest and the southeast, poses long term problems of sustainability and indicates that new development policies are required.
Ecological Indicators, 2015
This study was conducted in a rural region where there are conventional and organic farms, the agricultural production includes more than 20 million people, and the effect on environmental quality is still poorly known in terms of indicators. Our objectives were: (1) compare soils attributes to reference areas, (2) verifying if cultivated areas under different farm systems presented differences in the soils attributes, (3) evaluate the attributes of quality water of watersheds and comparing the results with limiting values established by environmental legislation, and (4) analyze the values considering three criterion: watersheds, climatic season, and region of the landscapes. The study was conducted in two rural watersheds that have similar biophysical features and located in the Ibiúna municipality, São Paulo State, Brazil. However, one watershed encompasses farms where landowners largely use conventional agricultural systems. In the other watershed approximately 25% of the farms there are using an organic farm system. In the two watersheds soil samples were collected in sites covered with natural forest and in sites with agriculture (one watershed being organic and other being conventional). The attributes analyzed were soil bulk density (BD), concentrations of Carbon (C) and Nitrogen (N), C:N ratio, C Management Index, and the abundance of 13 C and 15 N in the soil organic matter. Water attributes were analyzed onsite or in laboratory after analysis of samples. Analyses included: air and water temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, salinity, total of dissolved solids, total solids, electric conductivity, turbidity, total chloride, nitrate, total phosphorus and potassium. Regarding the soil attributes our database revealed that (1) the soils from cultivated sites of both watersheds presented significant differences from their respective forested areas, (2) Soil attributes are of equal quality in both farm systems. Concerning water attributes: (1) almost all attributes presented values better than the limiting values stipulated by Brazilian legislation; (2) the watersheds did not present significant differences of most of the attributes; (3) in the criteria climatic season data showed some significant differences. The data showed that the soils from the areas used for agricultural ends present belief that significantly worse soil quality in comparison to soils from sites still covered with natural forest. Neither the land cover nor farming system are altering the superficial water quality of the studied watershed and this appears to be related to the extensive percentage of natural remaining vegetation that still exists in both watersheds. The seasonality is an important force that drives the quality characteristics of the water. We highlight that the principles of organic agriculture should be practiced more efficiently and influences such as deforestation should be rigorously avoided.
An approach to assess the potential of agroecosystems in providing environmental services
Pesquisa Agropecuária Brasileira, 2016
The objective of this work was to present an approach to evaluate soil functions in agroecosystems and their impact on environmental services (ES). An approach with case studies was proposed to assess the relationship between the establishment and management of agroecosystems, in three Brazilian biomes (Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Caatinga), and their environmental services provision, considering the specificities of each area. A set of soil parameters that can be used as indicators to monitor changes in the agroecosystem was also proposed. The environmental services types most affected by the establishment and management of the agroecosystems were the supporting and provisioning services, showing the potential of agricultural management in providing multiple services, besides food, fiber, and energy. "No fire use" and "agricultural consortium" were the criteria for the establishment and management of agroecosystems with greater potential to increase environmental services provision, whereas biomass stock in soil and litter was the most appropriate soil parameter to be used as an indicator to monitor the impact of agroecosystems in environmental services provision. Index terms: environmental services indicators, multifunctional agriculture, public policies, soil management, sustainable agriculture. Uma abordagem para avaliar o potencial de agroecossistemas em prover serviços ambientais Resumo-O objetivo deste trabalho foi apresentar uma abordagem para avaliar as funções do solo em agroecossistemas e seus impactos sobre os serviços ambientais (SA). Uma abordagem com estudo de casos foi proposta para analisar a relação entre o estabelecimento e o manejo de agroecossistemas, em três biomas brasileiros (Floresta Atlântica, Cerrado e Caatinga), e a sua correlação com a prestação de serviços ambientais, tendo-se levado em consideração as especificidades de cada área. Também foi proposto um conjunto de parâmetros do solo que possam ser utilizados como indicadores para monitorar as alterações no agroecossistema. Observou-se que os tipos de serviços ambientais mais afetados pela implantação e pela gestão dos agroecossistemas são os de suporte e provisão, o que mostra o potencial que o manejo agrícola tem de fornecer múltiplos serviços, além de alimentos, fibras e energia. "Sem uso de fogo" e "consórcios agrícolas" foram os critérios usados na implantação e a gestão de agroecossistemas com maior potencial em aumentar a prestação de serviços ambientais, enquanto o estoque de biomassa no solo e na serapilheira foi o parâmetro do solo mais adequado para uso como indicador no monitoramento do impacto do agroecossistema na prestação de serviços ambientais. Termos para indexação: indicadores de serviços ambientais, agricultura multifuncional, políticas públicas, manejo do solo, agricultura sustentável.