Emergy Evaluation of Italian Agriculture Across Space and Time Scales

This paper evaluates in emergy terms the resource use and environmental performance of the Italian agricultural sector across levels, from local scale (olive, lemon and grape farms), through regional scale (Campania region) up to the national scale (whole Italy). The evolution over time (from 1985 to 2006) is also investigated to take into account how the demand for environmental support changed in the last two decades. The performance indicators were calculated in terms of emergy invested per unit of product (measured according to the mass, the available energy or the monetary value of the output) as well as the emergy throughput per unit of labor time applied and per unit of cropped surface. Other most commonly used emergy ratios (EYR, ELR, ESI, %REN) were also calculated. The transformity (seJ/J) of the Italian agricultural production as a whole increased by 84% in the investigated period reaching a value of 6.90·10 4 seJ/J in the year 2006; in the same period, the transformity of the agricultural production in Campania increased more than twice, from 1.14·10 4 seJ/J (1985) to 2.48·10 4 seJ/J (2006). The Emergy Intensity associated to the economic value generated in the year 2006 was 8.94·10 11 seJ/€ and 4.23·10 12 seJ/€ for Campania and Italian agricultures respectively, indicating that less emergy investment is needed in Campania to generate one unit of currency. The Empower density in the year 2006 was for the national system 7.83·10 15 seJ/ha while 3.29·10 15 seJ/ha for regional one. The above indicators are calculated including the emergy of labor and services with reference to the biosphere baseline of 15.83·10 24 seJ/yr.