Assessing Crop Portfolios: Diversification versus Monoculture for Biodiesel

The selection of crop patterns for agricultural areas is usually guided by the maximization of expected income. This variable is, however, influenced by the fluctuations of both crop productivity and prices. The annual variability is directly related to the risk of a crop portfolio and, according to the so called Modern Theory Portfolio (MTP), it is a fundamental aspect to be taken into account during the selection of crops. This is true especially in case of those farmers who are not wealthy. Crop diversification is considered an effective solution able to alleviate the abovementioned inter-annual fluctuations and to guarantee a safe minimum income. This being the context we assess different alternative crop portfolios for biodiesel production in Brazil, where many small and resource-poor ones co-exist with capital intensive and large-scale farms (units of less than 20 hectares constitute more than 60% of the total farm number). By adopting the MTP approach, we aim to compare two alternative and opposite strategies: monoculture and crop diversification for biofuel crop production. In particular, we evaluate the effectiveness of crop diversification in reducing the risk of crop portfolios and estimate possible losses in terms of expected incomes. The obtained results confirm that the choice of a mixed crop portfolio can guarantee the minimum risk in the majority of the analyzed cases, but the incomes are considerably lower than the ones obtained with monocultures. Nevertheless, the obtained outcomes vary considerably depending on the considered crop. Finally, an increment of diversity could have improved both expected income and risk of actual average national crop portfolio, which is close to soybean monoculture

Conciliare sicurezza alimentare e impatti ambientali: Water Footprint di scenari di produzione agricola nella Striscia di Gaza

Il presente studio analizza gli impatti ambientali e, in particolare, l’impronta idrica della produzione agricola su piccola scala nella Striscia di Gaza, area in cui le risorse naturali sono scarse, la densità demografica è molto elevata e buona parte della popolazione soffre di insicurezza alimentare. L’analisi confronta in una prospettiva di ciclo di vita una serie di scenari di rotazione colturale in termini di Water Footprint e di impatto ambientale, valutato mediante il metodo ReCiPe. I risultati mostrano discordanze tra gli ordinamenti dei diversi scenari ottenuti mediante le due metodologie. Viene, inoltre, valutata l’opportunità di affiancare alla produzione agricola l’acquacoltura basata sull’utilizzo dei bacini di accumulo dell’acqua piovana allo scopo di migliorare l’approvvigionamento proteico della popolazione. Risultati preliminari suggeriscono che tale attività non sia una soluzione efficiente in termini di consumi idrici, a causa degli elevati tassi di evaporazione

Trading off natural resources and rural livelihoods. A framework for sustainability assessment of small-scale food production in water-limited regions

Enhancing local production is key to promoting food security, especially in rural households of low-income countries, but may conflict with limited natural resources and ecosystems preservation. We propose a framework integrating the water-food nexus and a sustainable livelihoods perspective to assess small-scale food production in water-poor regions. We demonstrate it by assessing alternative production scenarios in the Gaza Strip at different spatial scales. At the scale of a single farm, there is a clear conflict among objectives: while cash crops ensure good incomes but contribute scarcely to domestic protein supply, crops performing well from the nutritional and environmental viewpoint are among the worst from the economic one. At the regional scale, domestic production might cover an important fraction of nutritional needs while contributing to household income, but water scarcity impairs the satisfaction of food demand by domestic production alone. Pursuing food security under multiple constraints thus requires a holistic perspective: we discuss how a multidimensional approach can promote the engagement of different stakeholders and allow the exploration of trade-offs between food security, sustainable exploitation of natural resources and economic viability

LCA Towards Sustainable Agriculture: The Case Study of Cupuaçu Jam from Agroforestry

Abstract Appropriate design of agricultural systems for the regeneration of deforested lands in critical areas, like the Amazon, may be an effective action to restore forest ecosystem functions and to mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change. Among the possible strategies, agroforestry may represent a viable trade-off between economic and environmental aspects. In this study, the production of a jam made of fruits from agroforestry was analysed from a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective. The agroforestry system investigated was implemented in a reforested area of the Peruvian Amazon. A cradle-to-grave approach, from the cultivation phase to the end-of-life of the jam, was adopted. Additionally to LCA, the focus is on the agricultural phase and, in particular, on the comparison of alternative agro-ecosystems from an environmental viewpoint. Therefore, LCA indicators are integrated with biodiversity indicators to account for the ecological dimension. Preliminary results highlight the benefits of producing jam from fruits harvested in an area of the Amazon reforested via agroforestry, as well as the high variability of environmental impacts due to the differences in the alternative agricultural systems considered

Global meat consumption trends and local deforestation in Madre de Dios: assessing land use changes and other environmental impacts

AbstractMeat consumption is becoming one of the most relevant sectors in terms of environmental impacts globally. In the Brazilian Amazon the effects of this process are seen in the ongoing deforestation and land-use change (about 65% of deforestation can be linked to cattle ranching). One of the main causes of this trend is the increased efficiency of the transport infrastructure: along both sides of the Brazilian Inter-Oceanic highway, about 50km of rainforest have been converted to cattle ranching. In 2011 the Inter-Oceanic highway was finalized also on the Peruvian side: the region of Madre de Dios is neighboring the Brazilian Amazon, therefore the risk is that this area will undergo the same kind of development.The objective of this analysis is to highlight the contribution of global meat demand trend as cause of land use change and deforestation in the Madre de Dios region. This focus has been chosen since, nowadays, the magnitude of cattle ranching activities is hidden by more evident and damaging activities (e.g., gold mining), and its near-future effects risk to be underestimated. By starting with investigating the preliminary signals of cattle ranching contribution to the local deforestation process, this analysis will serve as basis for more comprehensive future works on local data, including monitoring campaigns of local biodiversity and GHG emissions. Land-use change is, thus, analyzed through FAO data and also through data acquired with remote sensing carried out within other projects. Meat consumption and production outcomes are obtained from the FAOSTAT database. By integrating trends in the regional meat consumption with the emerging trading effects, which are incremented by the new highway, it is possible to highlight the risk that the global convergence in meat consumption trends can locally influence the deforestation in Madre de Dios

True Cost Accounting of a healthy and sustainable diet in Italy

It is widely upheld that global food systems are unsustainable. Sustainable diets are gaining prominence as key components to entangle global food system challenges, as well as to transition towards the pathway of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Hence, sustainable and healthy diets are at the core of much research with the aim to bring together nutritional adequacy, cultural acceptability, environmental sustainability, economic affordability, and shape future consumption patterns. This article contributes to advancing knowledge on sustainable diets by proposing a True Cost Accounting method to assess the cost and impact of the adoption of a more sustainable and healthier diet, using Italy as an illustration. The research analyses the complexity of a diet from an environmental, health, and socioeconomic point of view and defines a new assessment framework that can be replicated and adapted to other contexts. Results show that in Italy, the adoption of a sustainable and healthy diet has a 47% lower carbon footprint and 25% lower water footprint than the current diet, while impacting 13% less on the average income and food monthly expenditure. Also, the desirable diet has a 21% lower impact on the sanitary costs related to cardiovascular disease. This study corroborates that the consumption of the desirable diet would provide a total cost saving of 741 EUR per year per capita, if we consider its impact on the environment, health, and socio-economic costs

An optimization model for the planning of agroecosystems: Trading off socio-economic feasibility and biodiversity

Comprehensive approaches integrating ecological and socio-economic objectives are fundamental pillars in the design of more sustainable agroecosystems. To this purpose, we formulated an optimization model aimed to support decisions behind the planning of agricultural ecosystems. We demonstrate the proposed approach onto the design agroecosystems aimed at the regeneration of deforested lands in the Peruvian Amazon to investigate how the different objectives influence the species composition and the overall sustainability performance. The model incorporates the three dimensions of sustainability into the optimization objectives, i.e., annual income (economic dimension), species diversity (environmental dimension), and income stability (social dimension). The obtained results show, firstly, relevant tradeoffs between the economic objective and the social and ecological ones, with significant reductions in short term incomes in the agroecosystems with the highest levels of diversity. Secondly, the species compositions changes over time depending on the life cycle of selected species and following ecological succession paths. Finally, species diversity also determines heterogeneous ecological structures, and these are jointly good premises for ecosystem multi-functionality. We highlighted major methodological challenges for the planning of more sustainable agroecosystems, which are mainly linked to the conflict and trade-off analysis, long-term assessment, non steady-state solutions, and lack of data. Despite these challenges, the formulated optimization framework can quantitatively support the understanding and the pursuing of both the ecological conservation and the productivity of agroecosystems, and put the basis for future more detailed models

Assessing the Influence of Vegetation on the Water Budget of Tropical Areas

The regulation of the water cycle is a major service provided by forests. However, this service is endangered by the deforestation taking place in areas like the Brazilian Amazon basin. In this study, we use two different approaches to investigate how evapotranspiration and rainfall partitioning are influenced by different vegetation covers (forest and pasture). We first explore a dataset produced with a global model (GLEAM) and compare its predictions with those obtained with an existing simulation software (HYDRUS 1-D). Both methods consistently show that forests guarantee higher evapotranspiration rates than pastures, thus providing a larger contribution to water-related ecosystem services