Continuity, change, and geographical differences in Spain's firewood consumption: A new estimation (1860-2010)

Although firewood was the main energy source until recently in most parts of the world, our understanding of its consumption levels is still quite limited, even in regard to recent periods. The powerful impact of fossil energy carriers and their major effects on global ecology, economy and society have led us to underestimate the role firewood has continued to play during the energy transition. This article offers a new reconstruction of long-ter m firewood consumption in Spain, taking into consideration variables related to supply and demand, which are then used to reconstruct the production, appropriation and energy uses of firewood biomass. This new series distinguishes also between the origins (forest or crop firewood), and between different regional behaviors. The main findings indicate that total and per-inhabitant consumption has been greater than traditionally assumed; that there was major regional divergence, with consumption varying significantly from one area to another; that the decline in firewood consumption was gradual and later than previously thought; and that it increased or declined over time in a non-linear fashion. Moreover, the traditionally neglected estimation of the role of woody crops was found to be very significant in this process, as it represented between 20% and 70% of total consumption for the whole data series

Pastures and Cash Crops: Biomass Flows in the Socio-Metabolic Transition of Twentieth-Century Colombian Agriculture

This article aims to situate a national case study of the global periphery at the core of the debate on the socio-ecological transition by drawing on new data of biomass flows in twentieth-century Colombia. We draw up a century-long annual series converting a wide set of indicators from Net Primary Production (NPP) into the final socioeconomic uses of biomass, distinguishing around 200 different categories of crops, forests, and pastures. Our calculations draw on FAOSTAT and several corpuses of national statistics. The results show a fall of 10% in total NPP related to land-use changes involving forest conversion. Throughout the twentieth century, pasture was the most relevant among domestic extraction. Allocations of cash crops to industrial processing rose while the figure for staple crops for primary food consumption stagnated. The critical role of cattle throughout all periods and the higher yields of the industrial cash crops are behind this profile. This might also mean the start of a new trend of using pasture land for more profitable export crops, which establishes a new inner frontier of land-use intensification. Lastly, the article points out the phases of the socio-metabolic transition of biomass, explores the changes in biomass flows by looking at the history of the main drivers, and identifies the socio-ecological impacts of deforestation and industrial agribusiness

The open veins of Latin America: Long-term physical trade flows (1900-2016)

Latin America has long played a key role in the global provision of natural resources. Most of the continent's economies are net exporters of low-value, primary products and importers of manufactured goods at a high price. This pattern of specialised trade has highly negative consequences for economic development, the environment, and the local population's wellbeing. Yet to date, little empirical evidence has been collected on Latin America's total contribution to the rest of the world's regions in historical perspective. Applying the Material Flow Accounting methodology, this paper estimates the physical and monetary trade of 16 Latin American economies between 1900 and 2016. Our results show that: (i) yearly net exports of materials went from 4 Mt to 610 Mt between 1900 and 2016, and greatly accelerated since the World War II. (ii) Latin America is a net exporter of most types of materials (fossil fuels, non-energy minerals and biomass), so it harbours socio-environmental problems associated with different types of extractivism. (iii) Different regional export patterns exist: Andeans export subsoil (mining and energy carriers) while the rest export soil (land-based products). The countries with the lowest net exports are the smallest in size and with the highest population density. (iv) Europe and the USA have historically received most of the imports, but since the end of the twentieth century, the Southeast Asia region is the biggest importer of materials from Latin America. (v) The price received for exported material is much lower than the price paid for imported material; and (vi) various historical periods can be differentiated regarding the relationship between economic growth and physical trade balance

The impacts of agricultural and urban land-use changes on plant and bird biodiversity in Costa Rica (1986-2014)

Costa Rica is recognized worldwide for its nature conservation policy following the traditional land-sparing approach. However, concerns have been raised about the opposite trends of the agricultural land cover changes driven by the option to expand old and new export crops after the country's external debt crisis of the 1980s. We study what happened during the last 20 years by applying landscape ecology metrics to the REDD+ land cover maps of 1986, 2001, and 2014, and statistically testing these indicators with the locations of species richness of plants and birds recorded by INBio. Our results confirm that deforestation has been reversed and most of the biodiversity considered is housed in forestland, but also that the expansion of export monocultures and urban sprawl have fragmented and isolated these tropical forests. Ecological connectivity values decreased 13% across the territory, all crops are negatively correlated with bird and plant locations, and the metropolitan expansion caused a detrimental impact on coffee agroforestry. All these outcomes are consistent with the growing deficit of the Costa Rican physical trade balance due to a faster increase of tropical exports than the growing imports of staple food, with a loss of soil organic matter filled by high doses of agrochemicals imported. Overcoming these environmental problems require a new land-sharing approach to nature conservation aimed at improving ecological connectivity through an agroecology approach combined with land-use planning to preserve the remaining green belt of the shade coffee plantations as a buffer green infrastructure in the metropolitan area

Strategies for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation in Mediterranean agriculture: A review

[EN] An integrated assessment of the potential of different management practices for mitigating specific components of the total GHG budget (N2O and CH4 emissions and C sequestration) of Mediterranean agrosystems was performed in this study. Their suitability regarding both yield and environmental (e.g. nitrate leaching and ammonia volatilization) sustainability, and regional barriers and opportunities for their implementation were also considered. Based on its results best strategies to abate GHG emissions in Mediterranean agro-systems were proposed. Adjusting N fertilization to crop needs in both irrigated and rain-fed systems could reduce N2O emissions up to 50% compared with a non-adjusted practice. Substitution of N synthetic fertilizers by solid manure can be also implemented in those systems, and may abate N2O emissions by about 20% under Mediterranean conditions, with additional indirect benefits associated to energy savings and positive effects in crop yields. The use of urease and nitrification inhibitors enhances N use efficiency of the cropping systems and may mitigate N2O emissions up to 80% and 50%, respectively. The type of irrigation may also have a great mitigation potential in the Mediterranean region. Drip-irrigated systems have on average 80% lower N2O emissions than sprinkler systems and drip-irrigation combined with optimized fertilization showed a reduction in direct N2O emissions up to 50%. Methane fluxes have a relatively small contribution to the total GHG budget of Mediterranean crops, which can mostly be controlled by careful management of the water table and organic inputs in paddies. Reduced soil tillage, improved management of crop residues and agro-industry by-products, and cover cropping in orchards, are the most suitable interventions to enhance organic C stocks in Mediterranean agricultural soils. The adoption of the proposed agricultural practices will require farmers training. The global analysis of life cycle emissions associated to irrigation type (drip, sprinkle and furrow) and N fertilization rate (100 and 300 kg N ha(-1) yr(-1)) revealed that these factors may outweigh the reduction in GHG emissions beyond the plot scale. The analysis of the impact of some structural changes on top-down mitigation of GHG emissions revealed that 3-15% of N2O emissions could be suppressed by avoiding food waste at the end-consumer level. A 40% reduction in meat and dairy consumption could reduce GHG emissions by 20-30%. Reintroducing the Mediterranean diet (i.e. similar to 35% intake of animal protein) would therefore result in a significant decrease of GHG emissions from agricultural production systems under Mediterranean conditions. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.The authors would like to thank the Spanish National R+D+i Plan (AGL2012-37815-C05-01, AGL2012-37815-C05-04) and very specifically the workshop held in December 2016 in Butron (Bizkaia) to synthesize the most promising measures to reduce N2O emissions from Spanish agricultural soils. BC3 is sponsored by the Basque Government. M. L. Cayuela thanks Fundacion Seneca for financing the project 19281/PI/14.Sanz-Cobeña, A.; Lassaletta, L.; Aguilera, E.; Del Prado, A.; Garnier, J.; Billen, G.; Iglesias, A.... (2017). Strategies for greenhouse gas emissions mitigation in Mediterranean agriculture: A review. Agriculture Ecosystems & Environment. 238:5-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agee.2016.09.038S52423

Strategies for GHG mitigation in Mediterranean cropping systems. A review

In this review we aimed to synthetize and analyze the most promising GHGs mitigation strategies for Mediterranean cropping systems. A description of most relevant measures, based on the best crop choice and management by farmers (i.e., agronomical practices), was firstly carried out. Many of these measures can be also efficient in other climatic regions, but here we provide particular results and discussion of their efficiencies for Mediterranean cropping systems. An integrated assessment of management practices on mitigating each component of the global warming potential (N2O and CH4 emissions and C sequestration) of production systems considering potential side-effects of their implementation allowed us to propose the best strategies to abate GHG emissions, while sustaining crop yields and mitigating other sources of environmental pollution (e.g. nitrate leaching and ammonia volatilization)

From vineyards to feedlots: a fund-flow scanning of sociometabolic transition in the Vallès County (Catalonia) 1860-1956-1999

We analyse the changes to agricultural metabolism in four municipalities of Vallès County (Catalonia, Iberia) by accounting for their agroecosystemfunds and flows during the socioecological transition from organic to industrial farming between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The choice of three different stages in this transition allows us to observe the transformation of its funds and flows over time, the links established between them and the effect on their energy profiles.We emphasize the relevance of the integration and consistency of agroecosystem funds for energy efficiency in agriculture and their role as underlying historical drivers of this socioecological transition. While readjustment to market conditions and availability and affordability of external inputs are considered the main drivers of the transition, we also highlight the role of societal energy and nutritional transitions. An analysis of advanced organic agriculture c. 1860 reveals the great effort required to reproduce soil fertility and livestock from the internal recirculation of biomass. Meanwhile, a balance between land produce and livestock densities enabled the integration of funds, with a positive impact on energy performance. The adoption of fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizers c. 1956 reduced somewhat the pressure exerted on the land by overcoming the former dependence on local biomass flows to reproduce the agroecosystem. Yet external inputs diminished sustainability. Partial dependence on external markets existed congruently with internal crop diversity and the predominance of organic over industrial farm management. A shift towards animal production and consumption led to a new specialization process c. 1999 that resulted in crop homogenization and agroecological landscape disintegration. The energy returns of this linear feed-food livestock bioconversion declined compared to earlier mixed farming. Huge energy flows driven by a globalized economy ran through this agroecosystem, provoking deep impacts at both a local and external scale

The N-P-K soil nutrient balance of portuguese cropland in the 1950s: the transition from organic to chemical fertilization

Agricultural nutrient balances have been receiving increasing attention in both historical and nutrient management research. The main objectives of this study were to further develop balance methodologies and to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the functioning and nutrient cycling of 1950s agroecosystems in Portugal. Additionally, the main implications for the history of agriculture in Portugal were discussed from the standpoint of soil fertility. We used a mass balance approach that comprises virtually all nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) inputs and outputs from cropland topsoil for average conditions in the period 1951–56. We found a consistent deficit in N, both for nationwide (−2.1 kg.ha−1.yr−1) and arable crops (−1.6 kg.ha−1.yr−1) estimates, that was rectified in the turn to the 1960 decade. P and K were, in contrast, accumulating in the soil (4.2–4.6 kg.ha−1.yr−1 and 1.0–3.0 kg.ha−1.yr−1, respectively). We observed that the 1950s is the very moment of inflection from an agriculture fertilized predominantly through reused N in biomass (livestock excretions plus marine, plant and human waste sources) to one where chemical fertilizers prevailed. It is suggested that N deficiency played an important role in this transitioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A Net Energy Analysis of the Global Agriculture, Aquaculture, Fishing and Forestry System

The global agriculture, aquaculture, fishing and forestry (AAFF) energy system is subject to three unsustainable trends: (1) the approaching biophysical limits of AAFF; (2) the role of AAFF as a driver of environmental degradation; and (3) the long-term declining energy efficiency of AAFF due to growing dependence on fossil fuels. In response, we conduct a net energy analysis for the period 1971–2017 and review existing studies to investigate the global AAFF energy system and its vulnerability to the three unsustainable trends from an energetic perspective. We estimate the global AAFF system represents 27.9% of societies energy supply in 2017, with food energy representing 20.8% of societies total energy supply. We find that the net energy-return-on-investment (net EROI) of global AAFF increased from 2.87:1 in 1971 to 4.05:1 in 2017. We suggest that rising net EROI values are being fuelled in part by ‘depleting natures accumulated energy stocks’. We also find that the net energy balance of AAFF increased by 130% in this period, with at the same time a decrease in both the proportion of rural residents and also the proportion of the total population working in AAFF—which decreased from 19.8 to 10.3%. However, this comes at the cost of growing fossil fuel dependency which increased from 43.6 to 62.2%. Given the increasing probability of near-term fossil fuel scarcity, the growing impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, and the approaching biophysical limits of global AAFF, ‘Odum’s hoax’ is likely soon to be revealed

Pastures and Cash Crops: Biomass Flows in the Socio-Metabolic Transition of Twentieth-Century Colombian Agriculture

This article aims to situate a national case study of the global periphery at the core of the debate on the socio-ecological transition by drawing on new data of biomass flows in twentieth-century Colombia. We draw up a century-long annual series converting a wide set of indicators from Net Primary Production (NPP) into the final socioeconomic uses of biomass, distinguishing around 200 different categories of crops, forests, and pastures. Our calculations draw on FAOSTAT and several corpuses of national statistics. The results show a fall of 10% in total NPP related to land-use changes involving forest conversion. Throughout the twentieth century, pasture was the most relevant among domestic extraction. Allocations of cash crops to industrial processing rose while the figure for staple crops for primary food consumption stagnated. The critical role of cattle throughout all periods and the higher yields of the industrial cash crops are behind this profile. This might also mean the start of a new trend of using pasture land for more profitable export crops, which establishes a new inner frontier of land-use intensification. Lastly, the article points out the phases of the socio-metabolic transition of biomass, explores the changes in biomass flows by looking at the history of the main drivers, and identifies the socio-ecological impacts of deforestation and industrial agribusiness