The total material requirement -concept applied to agriculture: a case study from Finland

Abstract

In connection with the concept of sustainability emphasising the interaction of the economy and nature the material flow accounting (MFA) approach has in recent years obtained new relevance and is presently under vivid development. In this study, the concept of the total material requirement (TMR) of the MFA methodology has been applied to agriculture in Finland. The present level and development trends in use of natural resources since the beginning of the 1970’s are described. The objective is to show the feasibility of the approach, to point out the reduction possibilities within the agriculture and to provide tools to set clear quantitative goals for reduction. There appears to be an urgent need to develope new methods, because several of the TMR-based indexes cannot be applied within the agricultural sector as such. Three indexes -direct material input (DMI)/energy consumption, .DMI/use of commercial fertilisers, .DMI/use of biocides – are suggested to measure the resource efficiency and the tempo of change towards sustainability. Some of the problems are directly related to the lack of adequate and internationally comparable data. The study is part of the national ecoefficiency-project with the overall aim to analyse the dependence of the natural resource use from the structure and growth of the economy, to localise the strategic targets of dematerialisation of the economy and to create a coherent and internationally comparable database to be used in developing environmental indicators.;