Benchmarking crop systems according to energy-efficiency in the Inland Pampa (Argentina).

FERRARO, DIEGO OMAR

Brisbane

Conferencia; 5th World Congress of Conservation Agriculture; 2011

Agroecosystem design involves the use of complementary energy sources to control the growth and development of undesired community components (e.g. pests and weeds) and increase the energy harvest (e.g. yield). These additional energy requirements substantially reduce the energy efficiency of agroecosystems compared with natural systems (Pimentel, 1984). Furthermore, the potential negative impacts over the function and structure of agroecosystems due to this intensified use of natural resources has led to the need for developing environmental sustainability indicators. The intensification process of natural resource usage in modern agriculture, and particularly the higher energy-dependent production systems, has also modified the Argentinean cropping systems. One of these agroecosystems, the Inland Pampa, is a representative region subject to high rates of change in land use allocation (Guerschman and Paruelo, 2005). The Inland Pampa is a sub region of a fertile plain originally covered by grasslands, which during the 1900s and 2000s was transformed into an agricultural land mosaic by grazing and farming activities. However, since 1990 the traditional mixed grazing–cropping systems have been increasingly replaced by permanent cropping. The aim of this work presented here is to study changes in the energy efficiency of crops in the Inland Pampa.