Application of Ecological Footprint Analysis on nectarine production: methodological issues and results from a case study in Italy |
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| Authors: | Alessandro K Cerutti Marco Bagliani Gabriele L Beccaro Giancarlo Bounous |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Arboriculture, University of Turin, via Leonardo da Vinci 44, 10095 Grugliasco (TO), Italy;2. IRES (Istituto Ricerche Economico Sociali) Piemonte, via Nizza 18, 10125, Torino, Italy;3. IRIS (Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Sustainability), University of Torino, via Accademia Albertina 13, 10100 Torino, Italy;1. Dipartimento di Economia, Università di Foggia, Largo Papa Giovanni Paolo II, 1 – 71121 Foggia, Italy;2. Dipartimento di Scienze Agro-Ambientali e Territoriali, Università degli Studi di Bari “Aldo Moro”, Via Amendola 165/A – 70126 Bari, Italy;3. University of Tennessee, Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment, 311 Conference Centre Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, USA;1. Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Econometrics, Sakarya University, Esentepe Campus, Serdivan/Sakarya, Turkey;2. Faculty of Political Sciences, Department of Economics, Ankara Y?ld?r?m Beyaz?t University, Esenbo?a Campus, Çubuk/Ankara, Turkey;1. Università degli Studi della Basilicata, Via Nazario Sauro, 85, 85100 Potenza, Italy;2. Università degli Studi di Catania, Via Santa Sofia, 100, 95123 Catania, Italy;3. Università degli Studi di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, 90128 Palermo, Italy;1. Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, Japan;2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, Japan;3. Dalian Dongtai Waste Treatment Company, Dalian 116001, Japan;4. National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba 305-8506, Japan |
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| 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. |
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