Ecological Footprint and Carbon Footprint of Organic and Conventional Agrofoods Production, Processing and Services

The Ecological Footprint (EF) measure the natural capital demand of human activities (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996 and 2002) and reveal the sustainability of consumption patterns on individual, local, national and global scales (WWF, 2008). The ecological footprint measure the natural capital demand of human activities (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996) and reveal the sustainability of consumption patterns on individual, local, national and global scales (Arrow, 2002). Ecological footprint model assumes that all types of energy, material consumption and waste discharge require productive or absorptive capacity of a finite area. Six types of ecological biologically productive area (arable land, pasture, forest, sea space, built-up land and fossil energy land) are used to calculate the Ecological Footprint and ecological capacity (Wackernagel et al., 2002). The ecological footprint estimates the ‘‘minimum land necessary to provide the basic energy and material flows required by the economy’’(Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). The consumption elements are converted into a single index: the land area to sustain the lifeliving among human consummation groups. The area of land or sea available to serve a particular use is called biological capacity (biocapacity) and represents the biosphere’s ability to meet human demand for material consumption and waste disposal. The degree of unsustainability is calculated as the difference between actual available and required land. In the original ecological footprints model created by Wackernagel and Rees (1996) and reformulated by Chambers et al. (2000), the land areas included were mainly those directly required by households with autoconsumation life style. In the original ecological footprint model, land categories are weighted with equivalence and local yield factors, in order to express appropriated bioproductivity in world-average terms (Wackernagel et al., 2002). The present tendency is to emphases the potential of local food to contribute at the sustainable development, maintaining regional identities and support modern organic agricultural (Defra, 2007; Everett, 2008). Organic agro-production refers to agriculture which does not use artificial chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and respect animals lived welfare in more natural conditions, without the routine of using drugs or antibiotics, common in the intensive livestock farming. The most commonly reasons for consuming organic food are: food safety, the environment, animal welfare, and taste (Soil Association, 2003). The