Emergy-Based Sustainability Assessment and Perspectives of Regional Agriculture in Northern and Southern Italy

In this work, two Italian regions (Emilia Romagna, in Northern Italy, and Campania, in Southern Italy) are compared on the basis of an emergy evaluation carried out over the last 20 years. The regions show very different productive and institutional structures, which affect the overall performance. The Campania region is characterized by the presence of a high number of small productive units (4.0 hectares on average for each), most of which managed as family farms. Instead, the Emilia Romagna region has larger units (14.6 hectares on average for each) and a more industrialized agriculture. The cultivated agricultural areas show declining rates in both regions in the investigated period, down to respectively 1.05E+06 ha in Emilia Romagna and 5.04E+05 ha in Campania (year 2010). In both agricultural systems emergy-based performance indicators in terms of emergy invested per unit of product (crop production) and unit area were calculated. The following emergy ratios were also calculated: EYR, ELR, ESI, %REN). Results suggest that the demand for environmental support mainly depends on large use of energy, due to agricultural mechanization in Emilia Romagna, and to small size of farms and lower resource efficiency in Campania. The high intensity and low productivity of labor are also important factors affecting emergy demand in both regions.