Emergy signature as a basis for sustainability valuation of agro-ecosystems

Traditionally, research and advisory service had focused on increasing crop yield and improving the efficiency of the production systems for bringing down he price of food. However, the environmental and ecological costs are not taken into account which has a significant bearing of the long term sustainability of the agricultural practice. The emergy analysis is an accounting tool which takes into account both the environment and the economic costs of the production system, based on principles of thermodynamics. Here the objective of the study is the evaluation of a novel organically based, food and energy production (CFE) system to assess the resource use efficiency compared to conventional intensive winter wheat production system in Demark by using Emergy analysis (Odum and Odum, 2000). The emergy analysis was carried out by taking into account the inflow and the outflows of emergy within the boundaries of the production systems and calculating the emergy indices. The results reveal that the innovative agroecosystems, exemplified by CFE, are less resources demanding and amenable to local environments and helps conserve the ecosystem services in terms of sustainable supply of soil nutrients, moisture and biomass production. The study proposes a need for balance of intensive agriculture to produce enough food and CFE-like systems to maintain the ecosystem services required for the continued provision of food, fodder and energy needs of the growing world population.