Renewability and emergy footprint at different spatial scales for innovative food systems in Europe

Abstract

Food production is increasingly being challenged by limited resources of energy and land as well as by growing demand for food. In a future with less availability of fossil fuels, land area will become very important for capturing the flow-limited renewable resources. Emergy assessment has been applied to calculate scale dependent indicators, which account for the land area needed, if agricultural systems were to be supported solely on renewable sources. These indicators are designated emergy footprints (EmFs) and expand the concept of support area defined previously in emergy accounting. The EmF (in ha) is calculated based on renewable empower densities which convert resource use into area equivalents able to capture renewable flows. The spatial division between on-site, local and non-local land areas applied in this study, identifies where the support area is located in order to apply a site-specific renewable empower density. A new indicator applying the EmF is the emergy overshoot factor, which estimates the ratio between EmF and the geographical system boundary (in ha). We apply this approach on three innovative food supply systems in Europe located at farms characterised by combining high diversity, reduced use of resources, nutrient cycling and local sales. The question is whether this type of food system may be considered sustainable from a resource use point of view measured as resource use efficiency by means of unit emergy value (UEV), renewability (Ron-site and Rglobal), direct and indirect occupation of land on different spatial scales (EmF and Emergy overshoot factor) and productivity per ha of the directly observed areas and the EmF area, respectively. Labour inputs constituted between 13 and 80% of the total emergy flow. The proportion of resource use from renewable sources was between 31 and 60% when excluding the inputs of direct labour. The food system with the lowest UEV, excluding direct labour, had the highest emergy overshoot factor, which even exceeded the global average of seven. However, this system had the highest productivity. The system with the highest UEV, excluding direct labour, had the lowest overshoot factor. In conclusion, each food system strategy has its pros and cons and it depends on the priorities, which is judged the most sustainable from an emergy point of view.