Thermodynamic Optimisation Of The Use Of
Natural Resources: An Agroalimentary
Production In A Chianti Farm (Italy)
Author(s)
S. Borsa, N. Marchettini, A. Pizzigallo & F. M. Pulselli
Abstract
Agriculture is deeply based on the in loco availability of natural resources. They
are mostly provided for free by the environment and often neglected by
traditional accounting systems since it is difficult to measure their contribution or
their physical weight with respect to the marketable input expressed in monetary
units, more familiar to most people. The management of natural resources is a
fundamental step toward the sustainability of a productive process. In this sense,
it is necessary to answer some questions: how much does the local environment
support the system? How high is the level of dependence of the system on other
ecosystems? How much does the local environment contribute to make a given
profit? This paper presents the environmental assessment of the use of resources
for an agroalimentary production system located in the Chianti area (Province of
Siena - Italy) by using Emergy evaluation, a thermodynamic based methodology
introduced by Howard Odum during the ‘80s. The use of Emergy enables one to
calculate some sustainability indicators (such as Environmental Loading Ratio,
Emergy Yield Ratio, Emergy Density, Emergy Investment Ratio), able to give a
systemic and holistic picture of the production process from an environmental
point of view. Furthermore, this paper introduces the concept of \“eMternality” to
provide a monetary measure of the contribution of Natural Capital to the system.
Starting from the economic result of the productive process, the method of
\“eMternalities” allows one to redistribute the income among all production
factors, both marketable and environmental.
Keywords: agriculture, thermodynamic indicators, sustainable development,
emergy evaluation, emternalities.
Keywords
agriculture, thermodynamic indicators, sustainable development,
emergy evaluation, emternalities.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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