Application of Ecological Footprint Analysis on nectarine production: methodological issues and results from a case study in Italy
Articolo
Data di Pubblicazione:
2010
Abstract:
Ecological Footprint Analysis (EFA) is an environmental accounting system that provides an aggregate
indicator which is both scientifically robust and easy to understand by non-experts. Although based on
the lifestyle consumption of natural resources, recent improvements in the methodology now allow the
application of EFA to a final product. Thus the resulting footprint value represents the environmental cost
of all of the activities required to create, use and/or dispose of a particular product. The application of EFA
to agricultural systems is still uncommon and examples in the fruit sector rare. In this work a detailed
application of EFA to a commercial nectarine orchard in Piedmont (Italy) is presented. In contrast to
previous studies, we considered not only the one-year field operations, but also the whole lifetime of the
orchard. The calculation was conducted for six different orchard stages: (ST1) nursery propagation of the
young plants; (ST2) orchard establishment, (ST3) young trees producing low yields, (ST4) mature trees at
full production, (ST5) declining trees with low yields, and finally (ST6) orchard removal. The environmental
costs at each stage are presented and related to each other on the basis of the relative footprint
value. Results highlight the importance of applying EFA to the entire lifecycle of orchard production: ST4
accounted for the majority of costs at 65% followed by ST2, ST3 and ST5 at or near 10%, whilst the costs of
ST1 and ST6 were negotiable. Thus it is the type of ST4 production used which can have the greatest
impact on EFA values.
Tipologia CRIS:
03A-Articolo su Rivista
Keywords:
Orchard management; Fruit production; Sustainable farming; Environmental accounting
Elenco autori:
Alessandro K. Cerutti; Marco Bagliani; Gabriele L. Beccaro; Giancarlo Bounous
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