Abstract
AbstractAn understanding of agriculture's energy, material, and labor requirements is essential for achieving economic and ecological sustainability, and for assessing the effectiveness of relevant policy decisions (biofuel subsidies, regulations, labeling, etc.). Previous studies of energy, materials, and labor use in farming have been based on either unverified voluntary reporting or test plots, rather than on the high-resolution measurements of mass and energy flows. Here we present a recursive analysis of 1.25 million data points describing in unprecedented detail the resource transactions on a 60 ha farm functioning for over 6 years. This analysis highlights the importance of accounting for all types of materials, as well as capital equipment, non-field labor, and commuting. The superior energy efficiency of the farm's energy-saving methods, including green manure, crop rotation, composting, and short-duration grazing -- compared with conventional methods -- persists even when the higher labor requirements are taken into account. One of the farm's methods, however -- the use of horses for traction -- is shown to be highly inefficient compared with mechanical tractors.
Highlights
We present a recursive analysis of 1.25 million data points describing in unprecedented detail the resource transactions on a 60 ha farm functioning for over 6 years
The superior energy efficiency of the farm’s energy-saving methods, including green manure, crop rotation, composting, and short-duration grazing – compared with conventional methods – persists even when the higher labor requirements are taken into account
One of the farm’s methods, – the use of horses for traction – is shown to be highly inefficient compared with mechanical tractors
Summary
Conventional chemical-based agricultural methods achieve much higher yields than traditional approaches, but at high ecological and energy costs.[1,2,3,4,5] Modern organic production methods may provide improved sustainability,[6,7] but attempts to assess the energy and labor trade-offs of moving from conventional to organic methods have been either based on test plots,[8] which do not capture the full workings of a complete farm, or on unverified voluntary reporting.[9,10,11] Besides the questionable accuracy of such data, they fail to account for the whole range of materials consumed in farming, such as farm equipment, buildings, and sundry materials;[8,12,13] they do not take into account worker commute and food transportation energy. The weakness of the existing farming energy and labor data calls into question all previous work estimating the energy balance of crop-based biofuels9–11 – a critical issue, as the use of such biofuels is increasingly widespread and mandated. The comprehensiveness of the resulting database is unprecedented, and offers a picture of the requirements of farming that is both more detailed and more accurate than ever before. The database has made it possible to isolate the individual components and efficiencies of the farm, so that these can be compared directly to the full range of previous studies. The study farm was organic and employed methods intended to improve its sustainability, the results make it possible to assess the importance of such detailed accounting
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